Zen In English Literature and Oriental Classics

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ZEN IN

NGLISH LITERATURE

AND ORIENTAL CLASSICS

BY

R. H. BLYTH

tTobo

THE HOKUSEIDO PRESS
1948

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, mi

PRINTED IN OCCUPIED JAPAN

Dedicated to
Kayama Taigi,

Roshi of Myoshinji Betsu-In, Keijo, Chosen,
but for whom I should have known
nothing of Zen,

And to

Imamura Juzo,
of Kichijoji, Tokyo.

PREFACE

Zen is the most precious possession of Asia. With its be¬
ginnings in India* development in CHina, and final practical
application in Japan, it is today the strongest power in the
world. It is a world-power, for in so far as men live at alb
they live by Zen. Whereve* there is a poetical action, a re¬
ligious aspiration, a heroic thought, a union of the Nature
within a man and^the Nature without, there is Zen.

Speaking generally, in world culture we find Zen most
clearly and significantly in the following: in the ancient
worthies of Chinese Zen, for instance, Eno and Unmon; in the
practical men of affairs of Japan, Hojo Toldmune, for example,
and in the poet Basho; in Christ; in Eckehart, and in the music
of Bach; in Shakespeare and Wordsworth. Zen in English
Literature embraces the literature of Zen in Chinese and Japa¬
nese, the Chinese and Japanese Classics, and the whole extent
of English Literature, with numerous quotations from German,
French, Italian and Spanish Literatures. Don Quixote has a
chapter all to himself; he is for the first time, I believe, satis¬
factorily explained. He is the purest example, in the whole of
world literature, of the man who lives by Zen; but Sancho
Panza also is not so far from the Kingdom of Heaven as per¬
haps even his author supposed.

Of the Chinese poets, Toenmei and Hakurakuten, with

vii

viii PREFACE

their feeling for things , for everyday life, arfe nearest to Zen;
the “poetical” poets, Ritaihaku and Toho, are far behind.'
The question then arises: if Zen and poetry are takeivas
roughly interchangeable words, how it js possible to rate a
lesser poet as having more Zen? The answer is: there is a
confusion here between the two allied meanings of poetry fa
life.in accord with reality; and the writing of poetry,) and of
Zen (a religious system, that is, a certain way of thinking about
life; and living in accord with reality). In the meaning of
“ poetry ” as used in Zen in English Literature , Basho is the
world's greatest poet. In such a 4 X>em as the following,

Along the mountain path,

The scent of plum-blossoms,*

And, on a sudden, the rising sun!

a great deal must of course be supplied by the reader, but not
in the sense that he “ fills in the picture,” not that the poem
“ suggests ” something which the poem is not long enough to
say, not that the po6m is in any sense symbolip; it presupposes
that the reader is living, at least in fits and starts, a poetical
life, a life of Zen.

In English Literature we find expression of the Zen attitude
towards life most consistently and purely in Shakespeare,
Wordsworth,' Dickens and Stevenson. Arnold says, “The
strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry,”
and this is true of any religion at any time in the history of
the world. The word “unconscious*” implies that the poetry
is taken unawares, that it is unrecognised as such, as, for ex¬
ample, in Dickens; that what is believqd is the poetry, and not
the intellectual concepts involved in it. It is of the essence of

PREFACE W

pdetr f that it points to Something, just as (to use a favourite
Buddhist simile,) the finger points to the moon. Tlds Some¬
thing, though instantly recognised, is not to be defined.

We say amisse
This or that is;

Thy word is all, if we could spell.

For Buddhism or Christianity, the “word” (Zen) T)f both is the
same. On the one hand, it is the attainment of freedom, a
state in which we can say, as Beatrice said to Virgil,

Io son fatta da Dio, sua merc£, tale,

Che la vostra miseria non mi tange,

Ne fiamma d’esto incendio non m’assale.

Inferno , II, 91-93.

I am made of God, through His Grace.

Such that your misery touches me not,

Nor does flame of that burning assail me.

On the other hand, it is the salvation of mankind by our
vicarious suffering :

She sees her Son, her God,

Bow with a load of borrowed sins; and swim
In woes that were not made for him.

Literature, especially poetry< has this same double, para¬
doxical nature as religion, and it is the main theme of Zen in
English Literature, that where there is religion there is poetry,
where there is poetry there is religion; not two things in close
association, but one thing with two names. “ Zen in English
Literature” means Zen in English Poetry, that is. Poetry as
English Zen. The false religious and the false poetical life are
equally one: a wallowing in G'od, a .vague and woolly panthe¬
ism, nightingales and roses. If anything in so-called poetry,

CONTENTS

Preface . .

Chapter

1. What is Zen? .

2. Religion is Poetry .

3. Poetry is Every-day Life . ..

4. Directness is All .,.

5. Subjective and Objective .

6. Concrete and Abstract.

7. The Unregarded River of Our Life * ...

8. Everything Depends on the Mind .

9. The Mind of Man .

10. Words, Words, Words ..*>■.

11. Figures of Speech .

12. The Pale Cast of Thought.

13. Paradox.

14. Don Quixote.

15. Pantheism, Mysticism, Zen, I ..

16. „ ,. „ II .

17. ‘Religious’ Poetry ..

18. Non-Attachment I .

19. - „ . „ II ..' .

xili

... vii

Paffe

... l
... 25
... 41
... 59
... 71
... 85
... 96
... 106.
... 124
... 140
... 152
... 167
... 179
... 196"
... 212
... 225
... 244
... 273
... 285

xiv

CONTENTS

20.

Non- Attachment III .

.304

21.

IV...

. ..316

22.

Death .

. .. ... 329

23.

Children .

.351

24.

Idiots and Old Men...

.. ... 367

25.

Poverty .

.' .:.379

26.

Animals ..'.

.396

27.

Wordsworth .

.412

28.

Shakespeare.

•., ... 425

Index

... 437

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

WINTER LANDSCAPE

By Sesshu .

. ... Frontispiece

DARUMA AND EKA

•

By SesshO .; ...

. Facing page 100

MAN FISHING

By Baen.

.‘ .270

NYOIRIN KWANNON

(In Kdryuji; from Korea ?)

.400

CHAPTER I

WHAT IS ZEN?

Consider the lives of birds and fishes. Fish never weary
of the water; but you do not know the true mind of a fish,
for you are not a tish. Birds never tire of the woods; but
you do not know their real spirit, for you are not a bird,
it is just the same with the religious, the poetical life: if
you do not live it, you know nothing about it.

fix n ox it * H ck o fix u 7k \z * fr *ho fix [z

i) £> O 'i> & txi b 'ho J'i U it t? Hi ^>0

Ji K <*> t <i> 4» £n G "h 0 ftj M ox M

ifc t # *' < ^ in U {[; iflt 36 /r t/f 0 Oo

This that Chomei says in the Hbjoki 1 is true of the life of
Zen, which is the real religious, poetical life. But, as Mrs.
Browning says in Aurora Leigh ,

The cygnet finds the water, but the man
Is born in ignorance of his element.

Dogen, (1200-1253) founder of the Solo Sect of Zen in Japan, ex¬
presses this more poetically:

The water-bird

Wanders here and there
"Heaving no trace,

Yet her path

She never forgets.

< t.9 ol miz L T
3 H L t U H 0 It 0

l 1212 A.D.

l

2 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Zen, though far from indefinite, is by definition indefinable,
because it is the active principle of life itself.

The sun passeth through pollutions and itself remains as
pure as before, 1

so Zen passes through all our definings and remains Zen as
before. As we think of it, it seems dark, but “dark with ex¬
cessive light.” It is like Alice in The Looking Glass, the more
we run after it the farther away we get. Yet we read books
on Zen, and more books, hoping to find on some page, in some
sentence or other, the key to a door which is only a hallucina¬
tion. Zen says “Walk in!” Never mind the key or the bolt
or the massive-seeming door. Just walk in! Goethe’s revised
version of the beginning of the Gospel of St. John, comes
nearest:

Im Anfang war die Tat,

for action cannot be defined. In The Anticipation Traherne
says,

His name is Now . ..

His essence is all Act.

Milton describes its unnoticed universality in Comus:

A small unsightly root,

The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it.

But in another country, as he said.

Bore a bright golden flow’r, but not in this soil;
Unknown, and like esteem’d, and the dull swain
Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon.

It is seen selected for our admiration in art, music and poetry.
The difference between Zen in actual life and Zen in Art, is
that Art is like a photograph (and music like a film), that can
be looked at whenever we please. Or, we may say, just as
l Bacon; The Advancement of Learning .

WpAT IS ZEN?

3

Goethe called architecture frozen music, 1 art is frozen Zen.
Truth is everywhere, but is more apparent in science. Beauty
is in dustbins and butcher's shops as well, but is more visible
in the moon and flowers. Religion is in every place, at every
moment, but as Johnson says in his Journey to the Western
Islands,

That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would
not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety
would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.

We need not wait a moment, we need not stir a foot, to see
Zen, but it is more evident in some acts, some works of art,
some poems. In this book I have chosen examples from those
which have a special meaning for me. Emerson says,

It is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others
as to invent.

I have tried to appropriate them as far as lay in my power.

Here is an example from Oliver Twist. The Artful Dodger,
having been arrested, appears in court:

It was indeed Mr. Dawkins, who, shuffling into the
office with the big coat sleeves tucked up as usual, his left
hand in his pocket, and his hat in his right: hand, preceded
the jailer, with a rolling gait altogether indescribable, and,
taking his place in the dock, requested in an audible voice
to know what he was placed in that 'ere disgraceful situa¬
tion for.

“ Hold your tongue, will you ?'' said the jailer.

“I'm an Englishman, ain't I?" rejoined the Dodger.

“ Where are my priwileges?”

“ You'll get your privileges soon enough," retorted the
jailer, “and pepper with 'em."

1 Gesprache mit Goethe, Montag, den 23. Marz, 1829. “Ich habe
unter meinen Papieren ein lilatt gefunden,” sagte Goethe heute, “ wo ich
die Baukunst eine erstarrte Musik nenne.”

4

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

“ We’ll see wot the Secretary of State for the Home
Affairs has got to say to the beaks, if I don't,” replied Mr
Dawkins. “Now then! Wot is this here business? I
shall thank the madg’strates to dispose of this here little
affair, and not to keep me while they read the paper, for
I’ve got an appointment with a genelman in the City, and
as I’m a man of my word, and wery punctual in business
matters, he’ll go away if I ain’t there to my time, and then
pr’aps there won’t be an action for damage against them
as kep me away. Oh no, certainly not! ”

At this point, the Dodger, with a show of being very
particular with a view to proceedings to be had thereafter,
desired the jailer to communicate “ the names of them two
files as was on the bench.”

(A witness is called who testifies to the Dodger’s pickpocketing.

“Have you anything to ask this witness, boy?” said
the magistrate.

“I wouldn’t abase myself by descending to hold no
conversation with him,” replied the Dodger.

“ Have you anything to say at all ? ”

“Do you hear his worship ask if you’ve anything to
say?” inquired the jailer, nudging the silent Dodger with
his elbow.

“I beg your pardon,” said the Dodger, looking up
with an air of abstraction, “Did you redress yourself to
me, my man ? ”

“I never see such an out-and-out young wagabond,
your worship,” observed the officer with a grin. “Do you
mean to say anything, you young shaver?”

“No,” replied the Dodger, “not here, for this ain’t the
shop for justice; besides which, my attorney is. a break¬
fasting with the Wice President of the House of Commons;
but I shall have something to say elsewhere, and so will
he, and so will a wery numerous and ’spectable circle of
acquaintances as ’ll make them beaks wish they’d never
been born, or that they’d got their footmen to hang ’em
up to their own hat-pegs, ’afore they let 'em come out this
morning to try it on me. I’ll-■”

WHAT IS ZEN?

5

44 There! He’s fully committed! ” interposed the clerk.

44 Take him away."

44 Come on," said the jailer.

44 Oh, ah! I’ll come on," replied the Dodger, brushing
his hat with the palm of his hand. 44 Ah! (to the Bench)
it’s no use your looking frightened; 1 won’t show you no
mercy, not a ha’porth of it. You'll pay for this, my fine
fellers. I wouldn't be you for some thing! I wouldn't go
free, now, if you was to fall down on your knees and ask
me. Here, carry me off to prison ! Take me away ! "

The Artful Dodger is 44 the chameleon poet that shocks the
virtuous phi osophers" on the bench. Notice how what seems
to be at first mere impudence, rises with influx of energy, into
an identification of himself with the whole machinery of the
Law. He attains, for moment, to 44 Buddhahood, in which all
the contradictions and disturbances caused by the intellect are
entirely harmonised in a unity of higher order." 1 Someone to
whom I related the above, said to me, ,4 1 suppose the case of
Mata llari, the celebrated woman spy, was similar. When
she was being executed she refused to have her eyes band¬
aged." This is not so. Courage may and does often have Zen
associated with it, but Zen is not courage. A thief running
away like mad from a ferocious watch-dog may be a splendid
example of Zen. Basho gazing at the moon, is an example of

Zen; eating one’s dinner, yawning-where is the courage

in these ?

Here is an example, similar to that of Dickens, but taken
from real life. I was walking along a lonely mountain road
with my wife and we were talking about her elder sister, who
had died the year before. She said, '‘When we were young
we would often come back from town at night along this very
road. I am a coward, and was always afraid even though we

1 Prof. Suzuki's definition of Zen.

6

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

were together, but my sister said r 4 1 would like to whiten my
face and put on a white kimono, and stand over there in the
shadow of the pine-trees.' ” Once again, it is not the courage,
but the willing identification of self, the subject, with the
ghost, the object of fear, that has in it the touch of Zen. Here
is another example of a different kind, in which there is no
trace of ordinary courage; it consists in entire engrossment,
conscious and unconscious, in what one is doing. This re-
quires, of course, that one's work at the moment should be
thoroughly congenial to one's nature, that is to say, it must be
like the swimming of a fish or the flying of a bird. In his
Conversations with Goethe, under Tuesday, April 22nd, 1830,
Eckermann notes the following:

I was much struck by a Savoyard boy, who turned a hurdy-
gurdy, and led behind him a dog, on which a monkey was
riding. He whistled and sang to us, and for a long time
tried to make us give him something. We threw him
down more than he could have expected, and I thought he
would throw us a look of gratitude. However he did
nothing of the kind, but pocketed his money, and immedi¬
ately looked after others to give him more.

What struck Eckermann? Was it the ingratitude of the boy?
I think not. It was the complete absorbtion of the boy in the
work he was doing to get money. Other people had no ex¬
istence for him. Three days after, a very similar thing struck
Eckermann.

At dinner, at the table d’hote, I saw many faces, but few
expressive enough to fix my attention. However, the head -
waiter interested me highly, so that my eyes constantly
followed him and all his movements: and indeed he was a
remarkable being. The guests who sat at the long tab’e
were about two hundred in number, and it seems almost
incredible when I say .that nearly the whole of the atten-

WHAT IS ZEN?

1

dance was performed by the head waiter, since he put on
and took off all the dishes, while the other waiters only
handed them to him and received them from him. During
all this proceeding, nothing was spilt, no one was incom¬
moded, but alLwent off lightly and nimbly, as if by the
operation of a spirit. Thus, thousands of plates and dishes
flew from his hands upon the table, and again from the
table to the hands of the attendants behind him. Quite
absorbed in his vocation, the whole man was nothing but
eyes and hands, and he merely opened his closed lips for
short answers and directions. Then he not only attended
to the table but took the orders for wine and the like, and
so well remembered everything, that when the meal was
over, he knew everybody’s score and took the money.

This is a splended example of Zen, which Eckermann calls
“ comprehensive power, presence of mind and strong memory.”
We may call it “presence of Mind,” or “absence of mind.”
The memory, as Freud would say, is a matter of the will. We
forget because we will (wish) to forget, and remember because
we will to remember. “The whole man was nothing but eyes
and hands.” Turner was nothing but a paint-brush, Michael
Angelo nothing but a chisel. There is no greater pleasure in
ordinary life, so-called, than to see a bus-conductor, a teacher,
anybody, really engrossed in his work, with no thought of its
relative or absolute value, with no thought of its interest or
profit to himself or others.

A similar example is given in Dickens’ Martin ChuzzlewiL
Mr. Pecksniff and his daughters are dining at Todger’s, but
the really interesting tiling about the hilarious and convivial
proceedings is Bailey, the boy who cleans the boots and is
temporarily serving at table. He has “ life more abundantly,”
with no self-consciousness or “choosing” or judging or at¬
tachment ; equal to all circumstances, master of every situa¬
tion. And be it noted that just as Eckermann’s head waiter

8 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

shows his Zen by doing his work so well, to perfection, so
Dickens' boy shows his Zen by doing practically nothing at all,
to perfection, in similar circumstances.

Their young friend Bailey sympathised [with the two
Miss Pecksniffs] in these feelings to the fullest extent, and
abating nothing of his patronage, gave them every en¬
couragement in his power: favouring them, when the
general attention was diverted from his proceedings, with
many nods and winks and other tokens of recognition,
and occasionally touching his nose with a corkscrew, as if
to express the Bacchanalian character of the meeting. In
truth perhaps even the spirits of the two Miss Pecksniffs,
and the hungry watchfulness of Mr. Todgers, were less
* worthy of note than the proceedings of this remarkable
boy, whom nothing disconcerted or put out of his way.

If any piece of crockery, a dish or otherwise, chanced to
slip through his hands (which happened once or twice) he
let it go with perfect good breeding, and never added to
the painful emotions of the company by exhibiting the
least regret. Nor did he, by hurrying to and fro, disturb
the repose of the assembly, as many well-trained servants
do; on the contrary, feeling the hopelessness of waiting
upon so large a party, he left the gentlemen to help them¬
selves to what they wanted, and seldom stirred from be¬
hind Mr. Jenkins's chair: where, with his hands in his
pockets, and his legs planted pretty wide apart, he led the
laughter, and enjoyed the conversation.

This perfection, which we see always in inanimate things,
usually in animals, so seldom in human beings, almost never
in ourselves, is what Christ urges us to attain:

Be ye perfect, as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.

Many people will no doubt be surprised that Mark Tapley
is not used as an example of Zen. His desire “ to come out
strong " in the most difficult circumstances may seem evidence
of this, but actually it is evidence of the opposite. Zen is es-

WHAT IS ZEN?

9

sentially unconscious, unselfconscious, even unSelfconscious.
Notice further that, as Mrs. Lupin says, he is “ a good young
man/’ Sad to relate, we can find Zen in Mr. Pecksniff, Mrs.
Gamp, Bailey Junior, that is, in hypocrisy, vulgarity, and im¬
pudence, more readily than in the conscious unselfishness of
Mark Tapley. This is why the latter has something thin, un¬
real, out-of-joint about him. He is not equal to all circum¬
stances, only to the worst.

There are two fables by Stevenson, The Sinking Ship ,
which-shows Zen on its destructive side, and The Poor Thing ,
which illustrates its constructive working. Here is The Sink¬
ing Ship:

“Sir,” said the first lieutenant, bursting into the Captain’s
cabin, “the ship is going down.”

“ Very well, Mr. Spoker,” said the Captain; “but that
is no reason for going about half-shaved. Exercise your
mind a moment, Mr. Spoker, and you will see that to the
philosophic eye there is nothing new in our position: the
ship (if she is to go down at all) may be said to have been
going down since she was launched.”

“ She is settling fast,” said the first lieutenant, as he
returned from shaving.

“Fast, Mr. Spoker?” asked the Captain. “The ex¬
pression is a strange one, for time (if you will think of it)
is only relative.”

“ Sir,” said the lieutenant, “ I think it is scarcely worth
while to embark in such a discussion when we shall all be
fn Davy Jones’s Locker in ten minutes.”

“ By parity of reasoning,” returned the Captain gently,
“itwou’d never be worth while to begin any inquiry of
importance; the odds are always overwhelming that we
must die before we shall have brought it to an end. You
have not considered, Mr. Spoker, the situation of man,”
said the Captain, smiling, and shaking his Jiead.

“ I am much more engaged in considering the position
of the ship,” said Mr. Spoker.

10 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

‘‘Spoken like a good officer," replied the Captain, lay*
ing his hand on the lieutenant's shoulder.

On. deck they found the men had broken into the spirit
room, and were fast getting drunk.

“My men,” said the Captain, “there is no sense in
this. The ship is going down, you will tell me, in ten
minutes: well, and what then? To the philosophic eye,
there is nothing new in our position. All our lives long,
we may have been about to break a blood-vessel or to be
struck by lightning, not merely in ten minutes, but in ten
seconds; and that has not prevented us from eating dinner,
no, nor from putting money in the Savings Bank. I assure
you, with my hand on my heart, I fail to comprehend your
attitude."

The men were already too far gone to pay much heed.

“ This is a very painful sight, Mr. Spoker," said the
Captain.

“And yet to the philosophic eye, or whatever it is,"
replied the first lieutenant, “they may be said to have
been getting drunk since they came aboard.”

“ I do not know if you always follow my thought, Mr.
Spoker," returned the Captain gently. “But let us pro¬
ceed."

In the powder magazine they found an old salt smok¬
ing his pipe.

“ Good God," cried the Captain, “ what are you about?"

“Well, sir," said the old salt, apologetically, “ they told
me as she were going down."

“And suppose she were? " said the Captain. “To the
philosophic eye, there would be nothing new in our posi¬
tion. Life, my old shipmate, life, at any moment and in
any view, is as dangerous as a sinking ship; and yet it*is
man's handsome fashion to carry umbrellas, to wear india-
rubber over-shoes, to begin vast works, and to conduct
himself in every way as if he might hope to be eternal.
And for my own poor part I should despise the man who,
<even on board a sinking ship, should omit to take a pill or
to wind up his watch. That, my friend, would not be the
human attitude."

WHAT IS SEN?

11

“ I beg pardon, sir,” said Mr. Spoker. “ But what is
precisely the difference between shaving in a sinking ship
and smoking in a powder magazine?”

“Or doing anything at all in any conceivable circum¬
stances?” cried the Captain. “ Perfectly conclusive; give
me a cigar! ”

Two minutes afterwards the ship blew up with a
glorious detonation.

It is very amusing to see how the Captain adopts the
absolute position in, “the ship may be said to have been going
down since she was launched,” and, “ time is only relative,”
and then, descending to the relative in reproving the men for
drunkenness, is caught up by the first lieutenant. The “ philo¬
sophic eye,” is the eye of God, which sees shaving in a sinking
ship (where the shaving and the sinking have no immedia f e
connection) and smoking m a powder magazine (where the
smoking is the cause of the ship’s blowing up) as the same . 1
When we have the eye of God we are released from cause and
effect (“He that loseth his life shall find it”) from space (“If
ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou
cast into the sea; it shall be done,”) and from time (“A thou¬
sand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past”).

1 Speaking of superstition, William James points out that “to the
philosophic eye,” everything is both the cause and effect of everything
else. People connect a man’s death with his having been one of thirteen
at a dinner, the fall of a sparrow with some occuirerice in the Milky Way.

“ Were the intelligence investigating the man's or the sparrow's death
omniscient or omnipresent, able to take in the whole of time and space
at a single glance, theie would not be the slightest objection to the Milky
Way or the fatal feast being invoked among the sought-for causes.
Such divine intelligence would see instantaneously all the infinite lines
of convergence towards a given result, and it would, moreover, see im¬
partially : it would see the fatal feast to be as much a condition of the
sparrow's death as of the man’s; it would see the boy with the Stone to
be as much a condition of the man’s fall as of the sparrow's.”

Compare Lyly, of the skylark :

Now at heaven's gates she claps her wings,

The morn not waking till she sings. t

12

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

“ Doing anything at all in any conceivable circumstances/' is
the freedom of Zen. A man must be able (that is, willing) to
do anything on any occasion whatever. Hundreds of verses
in the writings of Zen express this perfect freedom, which
alone allows us to act perfectly. Here are some from the Zen*
rinkushu

Stones rise up into the sky;

Fire burns down in the water.

# ft & m X ft A 'I*

Ride your horse along the edge of a sword;

Hide yourself in the middle of the flames.

Blossoms of the fruit-tree bloom in the fire;

The sun rises in the evening.

+ M & 0 Wo

But the most important word in the fable is “ glorious."
Glorious means Good, as distinguished from good. The word
‘good' is a relative word opposed to 'bad/ The word “Good"
is absolute and has no contrary. In the same way we may
distinguish, in writing, but not in speaking, ‘happy' and
‘ Happy.' Stephen being stoned to death was Happy; he was
certainly not happy. Again, Love is what makes the world
go round; love is quite another thing. So as I say, glorious,
means Good; we have the Glorious Inferno of Dante, the
Glorious deafness of Beethoven, the Glorious sun that Blake
saw. The revolt of Lucifer, the career of Nero, the crucifixion

of Christ-all these were Glorious, like the detonation that

sent hundreds of souls into eternity. “Nothing is Glorious,
but thinking makes it so."

Just at this point another fable of Stevenson is relevant
perhaps, The Reader . Let me insert it here;

WHAT IS ZEN?

13

“I never read such an impious book,” said the reader,
throwing it on the floor.

“You need not hurt me,” said the book; “You will
only get less for me second-hand, and I did not write my¬
self.”

“ That is true,” said the reader, “ My quarrel is with
your author.”

“Ah, well,” said the book, “you need not buy his
rant.”

“ That is true,” said the reader. “ But I thought him
such a cheerful writer.”

“I find him so,” said the book.

“You must be differently made from me,” said the
reader.

“ Let me tell you a fable,” said the book. “ There were
two men wrecked upon a desert island; one of them made
believe he was at home, the other admitted ...”

“Oh, I know your kind of fable,” said the reader.

“ They both died.”

“ And so they did,” said the book. “ No doubt of that.
And every body else.”

“That is true,” said the reader. “Push it a little
further for this once. And when they were all dead ? ”

“They were in God’s hands, the same as before,” said
the book.

“ Not much to boast of, by your account,” cried the
reader.

“Who is impious, now?” said the book, and the reader
pilt him on the fire.

The coward crouches from the rod,

And loathes the iron face of God.

Most religious people are impious, far more so than the
irreligious. They always tell you, “God wouldn’t do that.”
“The universe couldn’t be made like that.” “Good is good
and bad is bad, and never the twain shall meet.” Impiety
means ingratitude, not being thankful for what God gives, but
wanting, nay, demanding something else, requiring the uni-

14

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

verse to be different from what it is. Before we are born, all
our life, and for all eternity after, we are in God's hands;
whether our life continues, or whether it fizzles out, we are to
say “ Thank God! ”

The other fable is The Poor Thing , which shows Zen
working, as it so often does, in a man of " little lore.” This
simplicity of mind, which we see and envy in children and
idiots, is essential if we would become the real master of our
fate, the captain of our soul. Basho, in his Oku no Hosomichi
quotes with approval Confucius' saying, that firmness, resolute¬
ness, simplicity and slowness of speech, are not far from virtue,

and Theseus, in A Midsummer Night's Dream ,

Never anything can be amiss
When simpleness and duty tender it.

THE POOR THING

There was a man in the islands who fished for his
bare bellyful and took his life in his hands to go forth
upon the sea between four planks. But though he had
much ado, he was merry of heart; and the gulls heard him
laugh when the spray met him. And though he had little
lore, he was sound of spirit; and when the fish came to his
hook in the mid-waters, he blessed God without weighing.
He was bitter poor in goods and bitter ugly of countenance,
and he had no wife.

It fell at the time of the fishing that the man awoke
in his house about the midst of the afternoon. The fire
burned in the midst, and the smoke went up and the sun
came down by the chimney. And the man was aware of
the likeness of one that warmed his hands at the red peat
fire.

" I greet you,” said the man, “ in the name of God.”

WHAT IS ZEN?

15

" I greet you,” said he that warmed his hands, “ but
not in the name of God, for I am none of His; nor in the
name of Hell, for I am not of Hell. For I am but a blood¬
less thing, less tharr wind and lighter than a sound, and
the wind goes through me like a net, and I am broken by
a sound and shaken by the cold.”

“ Be plain with me,” said the man, “ and tell me your
name and of your nature.”

“ My name,” quoth the other, “ is not yet named, and
my nature not yet sure. For I am part of a man; and I
was a part of your fathers, and went out to fish and fight
with them in the ancient days. But now is my turn not
yet come; and I wait until you have a wife, and then shall
I be in your son, and a brave part of him, rejoicing man¬
fully to launch the boat into the surf, skilful to direct the
helm, and a man of might where the ring closes and the
blows are going.”

“This is a marvellous thing to hear,” said the man;
“ and if you are indeed to be my son, I fear it will go ill
with you; for I am bitter poor in goods and bitter ugly in
face, and I'shall never get me a wife if I live to the age of
eagles.”

“All this have I come to remedy, my Father,” said the
Poor Thing; “ for we must go this night to the little isle
of sheep, where our fathers lie in the dead-cairn, and to¬
morrow to the Earl's Hall, and there shall you find a wife
by my providing.”

So the man rose and put forth his boat at the time of
the sunsetting; and the Poor Thing sat in the prow, and
the spray blew through his bones like snow, and the wind
whistled in his teeth, and the boat dipped not with the
weight of him.

“I am fearful to see you, my son,” said the man.
“For methinks you are no thing of God.”

“ It is only the wind that whistles in my teeth,” said
the Poor Thing, “ and there is no life in me to keep it out.”

So they came to the little isle of sheep, where the surf
burst all about it in the midst of the sea, and it was all
green with bracken, and all wet with dew, and the moon
enlightened it. They ran the boat into a cove, and set foot

16

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

to land; and the man came heavily behind among the
rocks in the deepness of the bracken, but the Poor Thing
went before him like a smoke in the light of the moon.
So they came to the deadcairn, and they laid their ears to
the stones; and the dead complained withinsides like a
swarm of bees: “ Time was that marrow was in our bones,
and strength in.our sinews; and the thoughts of our head
were clothed upon with acts and the words of men. But
now are we broken in sunder, and the bonds of our bones
are loosed, and our thoughts lie in the dust.”

Then said the Poor Thing: “ Charge them that they
give you the virtue they withheld.”

And the man said: “ Bones of my fathers, greeting!
for I am sprung of your loins. And now, behold, I break
open the piled stones of your cairn, and I let in the noon
between your ribs. Count it well done, for it was to be;
and give me what I come seeking in the name of blood
and in the name of God.”

And the spirits of the dead stirred in the cairn like
ants; and they spoke: “You have broken the roof of our
cairn and let in the noon between our ribs; and you have
the strength of the still-living. But what virtue have we?
what power? or what jewel here in the dust with us, that
any living man should covet or receive it? for we are less
than nothing. But we tell you one thing, speaking with
many voices like bees, that the way is plain before all like
the grooves of launching. So forth into life and fear not,
for so did we all in the ancient ages.” And their voices
passed away like an eddy in a river.

“Now,” said the Poor Thing, “they have told you a
lesson, but make them give you a gift. Stoop your hand
among the bones without drawback, and you shall find
their treasure.”

So the man stooped his hand, and the dead laid hold
upon it many and faint like ants; but he shook them off,
and behold, what he brought up in his hand was the shoe
of a horse, and it was rusty*

“It is a thing of no price,” quoth the man, “for it

is rusty.”

WHAT IS ZEN?

17

“ We shall see that,” said the Poor Thing; “ for in my
thought it is a good thing to do what our fathers did, and
to keep what they kept without question. And in my
thought one thing is as good as another in this world; and
a shoe of a horse will do.”

Now they got into their boat with thd horse-shoe, and
when the dawn was come they were aware of the smoke
of the Earl’s town and the bells of the Kirk that beat. So
they set foot to she.re; and the man went up to the market
among the fishers over against the palace and the Kirk;
and he was bitter poor and bitter ugly, and he had never
a fish to sell, but only a shoe of a horse in his creel, and it
rusty.

“Now,” said the Poor Thing,” “do so and sp, and you
shall find a wife and I a mother.”

It befell that the Earl’s daughter came forth to go into
the Kirk upon her prayers; and when she saw the poor
man stand in the market with only the shoe of a horse, and
it rusty, it came in her mind it should be a thing of price.

“ What t is that ? ” quoth she.

“ It is a shoe of a horse,” said the man.

“And what is the use of it? ” quoth the Earl’s daughter.

“It is for no use,” said the man.

“I may not believe that,” said she; “else why should
you carry it ? ”

“ I do so,” said he, “ because it was so my fathers did
in the ancient ages; and I have neither a betteisreason nor
a worse.” '

Now the Earl’s daughter could not find it in her mind
to believe him. “ Come,” quoth she, “ sell me this, for I
am sure it is a thing of price.”

“ Nay,” said the mem, “ the thing is not for sale.”

“What!” cried the Earl’s daughter. “Then what
make you here in the town’s market, with the thing in
your creel and nought beside?”

“I sit here,” says the man, “ to get me a wife.”

“ There is no seqse in any of these answers,” thought
the Earl’s daughter; “and I could find it in my heart to
weep.”

IS ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

By came the Earl upon that; and she called him and
told him all. And when he had heard, he was of his
daughter’s mind that this should be a thing of virtue; and
charged the man to set a price upon’ the thing, or else be
hanged upon the gallows; and that was near at hand, so
that the man could see it.

44 The way of life is straight like the grooves of launch¬
ing,quoth the man. 44 And if I am to be hanged let me be
hanged.” *

44 Why! ” cried the Earl, 44 will you set your neck
against a shoe of a horse, and it rusty ? ”

44 In my thought,” said the man, 44 one thing is as good
as another in this world; and a shoe of a horse will do.”

44 This can never be,” thought the Earl; and he stood
and looked upon the man, and bit his beard.

And the man looked up at him and smiled. 44 It was
so my fathers did in the ancient ages,” quoth he to the
Earl, 44 and I have neither a better reason nor a worse.”

44 There is no sense in any of this,” thought the Earl,
44 and I must be growing old.” So he had his daughter on
one side, and says he: 44 Many suitors have you denied,
my child. But here is a very strange matter that a man
should cling so to a shoe of a horse, and it rusty ; and that
he should offer it like a thing on sale, and yet not sell it;
and that he should sit there seeking a wife. If I come not
to the bottom of this thing, I shall have no more pleasure
in bread; and I can see no way, but either I should hang
or you should marry him.”

44 By my troth, but he is bitter ugly,” said the Earl's
daughter. 44 How if the gallows be so near at hand ? ”

44 Itwasnot so,” said the Earl, 44 that my fatheisdid
in the ancient ages. I am like the man, and can give you
neither a better reason nor a worse. But do you, prithee,
.speak with him again.”

So the EarTs daughter spoke to the man. 44 If you
were not so bitter ugly,” quoth she, ,4 my father the Earl
would have us marry.”

,4i Bitter ugly am I,” said the man, 44 and you as fair
as May. Bitter ugly l am, and what of that? It was £9
jny fathers-”

WHAT IS ZEN?

n

„ “In the name of God,” said the Earl’s daughter, “let
your fathers be! ”

“If I had done that,” said the man, “you had never
been chaffering with me here in the market, nor your
father the Earl watching with the end of his eye.”

“ But come,” quoth the Earl’s daughter, “ this is a
very strange thing, that you would have me wed for a
shoe of a horse, and it rusty.”

“In my thought,” quoth the man, “one thing is as
good-”

“ Oh, spare me that,” said the Earrs daughter, “ and
tell me why 1 should marry.”

“ Listen and look,” said the man.

Now the wind blew through the Poor Thing like an
infant crying, so that her heart was melted; and her eyes
were unsealed, and she was aware of the thing as it were
a babe unmothered, and she took it to her arms, and it
melted in her arms like the air.

“ Come,” said the man, “ behold a vision of our chil¬
dren, the busy hearth, and the white heads. And let that
suffice, for it Is all God offers.”

“I have no delight in it,” said she; but with that she
sighed.

“The ways of life are straight like the grooves of
launching,” said the man; and he took her by the hand.

“And what shall we do with the horseshoe?” quoth

she.

“ I will give it to your father,” said the man; “ and he
can make a kirk and a mill of it for me.”

If came to pass in time that the Poor Thing was born;
but memory of these matters slept within him, and he
knew not that which he had done. But he was a part of .
the eldest son; rejoicing manfully to launch the boat into
the surf, sk’lful to direct the helm, and a man of might
where the ring closes and the blows are going.

“Sound of spirit” and “merry of heart,”—to how few is
it given to be this. It is a kind of natural Zen. “ He blessed
God without weighing.” Long fish, short fish, fat fish, thin fish,

$0 ZEN IN ENGTISH LITERATURE

many fish, few fish, no fish — he thanked God for them all.
“ The way is plain before all like the grooves of launching.” 1
In Inscribed on the Believing Mind , we have:

The Way is not difficult; but you must avoid choosing!

m ft o («.&«)

(“Avoid choosing" means “without weighing," “Judge
not that ye be not judged.")

Christians and Buddhists alike put their religion in some
other place, some other time; but we are all, with or without
religion, tarred with the same brush. Like Mrs. Jelleby in
Bleak House , with her “ impossible love of the blackamoors " 2
and indifference to her own husband and children, we think
of our religion, our ideals, forgetting (on purpo.se) that the
Way is here and now, in what we are doing, saying, feeling,
reading, at this very moment. Confucius says in The Doctrine
of the Mean,

The Way is not far from man; if we take the Way as
something superhuman, beyond man, this is not the real
Way.

fM Ao A£tti!tiB«A 0 ^"TWlSitto

Ok Jif£ T ■=**> *o)

Mencius is even closer to Stevenson:

The Way is near, but men seek it afar. It is in easy
things, but men seek for it in difficult things.

m # ffi TfiJ & gff * * ft Zb M & Iff tto -1—o)

The Way is like a great highroad; there is no difficulty

1 John Clare, in Ploughman Singing , says,

O happiness, how single is thy track.

2 Emerson.

WHAT IS ZEN?

2f

whatever in recognising it. What is wrong with us is that
we do not really search for it. Just go' home, and plenty
of people will point it out to you.

Mtm* n#o

T- $$ rftj -K /2l j D 1 P 0 ( o)

The Saikontan 1 says,

The Zen Sect tells us: When you are hungry, eat
rice; when you are weary, sleep.

W >k 14 > KK $ 88 |K» ft # HKo (4S tt *>

That is all religion is: eat when you are hungry, sltfep
when you are tired. But to do such simple things properly is
really the most difficult thing in the world. I remember when
I began to attend lectures, at a Zen temple, on the Mumonkan ,

I was surprised to find that there were no lofty spiritual truths
enunciated at all. Two things stuck in my head, because they
were repeated so often, and with such gusto. One of them,
emphasised with extreme vigour, was that you must not srmke
a cigarette while making water. The other was that when
somebody calls you (in Japanese “ Oi! ”) you must answer
(Hai!) at once, without hesitation. When we compare this
with the usual Christian exhortatory sermon, we cannot help
being struck by the difference. I myself heard the “Oi!”
u Hai!” so many times I began to wait for it and look on it as
a kind of joke, and as soon as I did this, I began to see a light,
or “get warm,” as the children say. It is like the grooves of
launching. Release the blocks and the ship moves. One calls
“ Oi! ” the other says “ Hai! ” There is nothing between.

“It is a good thing to do what our fathers did, and to keep
what they kept without question.” This is not a popular

1 Meditations on the Life of Simplicity , by Koji-sei ($0fj M) of the,,
Ming Era.

22

2EN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

doctrine nowadays. Old traditions are forgotten but new ones
spring up like mushrooms everywhere. In the Zen temple,
together with some unnecessary and old-fashioned customs,
there is a vast body of essential religion preserved in the form
of rules: regularity of life, celibacy, vegetarianism, poverty,
unquestioning obedience, methodical destruction of self-full
thinking and acting, complete control of mind and body, - all
these systematised into a way of life in which work, we may
say, Work, is the grand answer to the question, “ What is
man's element ?”

“ And in my thought/ one thing is as good as another in
this world." This states the absolute value of everything;
all things have equal value, for all have infinite value. If you
like this kind of mystical truth and can swallow it easily, well
and good. If not, it does not matter, because it is only ordinary
common sense. The value of a thing is in its use, 1 as Robinson
Crusoe found out with regard to the pieces-of-gold on his de¬
sert island. It's no good playing the cello to a thirsty man.
You can't light a fire with icecream. You may protest that
things differ at least in their potential value; a drawing by
Claude is not equal in value to a grain of sand. It may well
be so. The financial, the artistic, the moral values may differ :
the point is that the absolute value is the same. If you see in¬
finity in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, where is

1

and,

For example:

I saw her read
Her Bible on hot Sunday afternoons,

And loved the book, when she had dropped asleep,

And made of it a pillow for her head. ( Prelude , IV, 229)

The melons, which last year
I scolded him for eating,

I now offer to his spirit.

* ¥ * 'C p£ o f: A be tf U ‘J

Oemaru (1719-1805)
.(rtffcfctt*)

What is sen? 2s

the necessity for anything else ? Everything depends on the
mind of man;

There is nothing either good br bad but thinking makes it
so.

So when the man was asked what was the use of his rusty
horse-shoe, he answered, “It is for no use.” This ha9 exactly
the same meaning as the 1st Case of the Mumonkan. %

A monk said to Joshu, “ Has this dog the Buddha-nature
<.or not ? ” Joshu replied “ No! ”

’.««»«• HffriWo m-xMo

Its absolute value is nil. It has the same value as a rusty
horse-shoe. Has this rusty horse shoe the Buddha nature?
The answer is. Yes! If you can rise, just for a moment, beyond
this No-Yes, you understand that one thi ngs is as good (that is,
as Good) as another in this world. “ And^t that suffice, for
it is all God offers.” What is happening to me, the writer, in
this place, at this moment; to you, the reader, in your place, at
the very moment of reading this, what you see and feel, your
circumstances internal and external, — it is all that God offers.
Do you want to be in some other place, in different circum¬
stances ? Take the present ones to your heart, 1 let them suffice,
for it is all God offers.. If you feel aggrieved with so little, re¬
member that “ one thing is as good as another.” If your aim
is comfort, only some things, some times, some places will do.

1 Compare what Nietzsche says in connection with his doctrine of
Eternal Recurrence (ewige Wiederkehr), giving a fine definition of the
man who lives by Zen,

das Ideal des iibermuthigsten, lebendigsten und weltbejahcndsten Men-
schen, der sich nieht nur mit dem was war und ist, abgefunden und
vertragen gelernt hat, sondern es, so wie es war und ist, wieder haben
will, in alle Ewigkeit binaus unersattlich da capo rufend. (, Jenseits von
Gut und Bose, par. 56)

&4 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

If your aim, is virtue (that is, Goodness, not goodness,) any¬
thing, any time, any place will suffice. When Confucius was
asked concerning the brothers Haku I and Sliuku Sai, who
gave up the throne and their lives rather than do wrong,

“ Had they any regrets ? ”

he answered,

“They sought for virtue; they got virtue: what was
there for them to regret ? ”

PK X fnj & 0

-Ln 1'Mo)

CHAPTER II

RELIGION IS POETRY

Many people must have been struck by the fact that the
most profoundly religious passages in the Bible are the most
poetical. When we think of such lines as,

The morning stars sang together and ail the sons of God
shouted for joy.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth
~Tne beside the still waters.

Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are
peace.

How oft would I have gathered thy children together, even
as a hen gathereth her chickens under h£r wings, and
ye wouM not!

the religion and the poetry are not merely inseparable but
identical. The poetry may be analysed, but disappears in the
process: the religious elements may be separated, but it is no
longer religion.

With the Buddhist sutras it is quite otherwise. Take for
example The Gospel of Buddha, by Paul Carus, a collection of
the most interesting and pregnant of the sayings of Buddha,
or A Buddhist Bible, by Dwight Goddard, containing transla¬
tions of the Diamond Sutra, the Lankavatara Sutra, the Su-
rangana Sutra etc. There is not a line of poetry, not a poetical
thought in either of them. Of the verbose and interminable
repetitions of the Sacred Books of The East it is not necessary

25

:26

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

to speak. And this is not simply a question of the quality of
the translation; in the Japanese, Chinese, German, French'
translations, the same is true. Must we say, then, that Truth
is Truth and Poetry is Poetry, and never the twain shall meet?
Is it impossible to reconcile the poetico-religiousness <5f the
Bible with the prosaic truth of the sutras ?

Throughout this book and throughout life itself, one thing
must never be forgotten:

In the three worlds, everything depends on the mind, 1
that is,

Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

When we use the word “poetical/’ we can ascribe it to three
different things: the poet, the subject of the poem, or the poem
itself; Burns, the mouse, or the poem he wrote on it. Burns
was a poet. 1 By this we mean that above other men he saw
the Life of life. He was also a poet in that he wrote poetry*
that is, the latent power in him was expressed in what the lSth
century called “ tuneful numbers.” But Burns in a vacuum is
meaningless; he needed the mouse. The mouse was a poetical
subject; what is not? Many ploughmen had overturned a
mouse’s nest before, with and without poetical thoughts and
feelings, but Burns expressed them; not merely his own per¬
sonal feelings but the feelings of man, that is, of God, towards
the mouse. The mouse is all right, just as it is, but it is worked
up, so to speak, as a poetical object for the mind. Some people
prefer the mouse, some the poem on the mouse. This is a
matter of taste, of temperament, and there is no disputing, and
no odious comparisons to be made. This same difference o£'
character, of approach to reality, is the basis of the difference;

1 Hoj&ki: ^ H H # it V »fc» — o U l J 0

RELIGION IS POETRY

27

between the Bible and the Sutras. This may be proved in an
example. The most profound, the most religious utterance in
the world is a sentence in the Kongo Kyo,

Awaken the mind without fixing it anywhere. 1
m M m it rfrj & & 'i> (% T #)

This has no power to move us, it seems. If you can under¬
stand it, it reveals the secret of life, of living, but it has no
cadence, no tone; it is too abstract, too vague; too cold, too
inhuman.. It lacks all the humanity, the emotion, the poetry,
the religion, of

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn
of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find
rest unto yoursouls. , r

But everything depends on the mind. Nothing is poetical or
unpoetical but thinking makes it so. E-No, a woodseller of
Canton was selling firewood one day, in the local market. A
man bought some wood and ordered it to be carried to his
shop. E-No carried it there, received the money, and as he
*came out heard a priest reciting the Kongo Kyo. When he
heard this sentence, “ Awaken the mind without fixing it any¬
where, M he became enlightened (converted).

TtT Cft SB * * O.

«£❖ LT*tfiCS S>

—#cd*S

BP M pi to (* mw mu $ - *)

He received the rote and bowl from the 5th Patriarch, fled •

1 For other translations, see Chapter 19, Non-attachment, II.

28 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

into the wilderness where he remained for 15 years, but later
became so famous that he received a command from the Em¬
peror Chuso to come to the capital to preach, but excused
himself on the grounds of ill-health. If it had not been for
E-No, it is doubtful whether Zen would have made any further
progress in China, and whether it would have ever arrived in
Japan. What would Japanese culture have been without the
stimulus of Zen? No tea ceremony, no Bushido, no No, no
Haiku — all this and more contained in the words, 44 Awaken
the mind without fixing it anywhere." Further, these words
at bottom are identical with the words of Christ. The 44 mind "
of the Kongo Kyo is the 44 1” of Christ; “ labour," “heavy
laden" of the Bible is the “fixing" of the sutra. The object
of both is rest. This was the object of the 2nd Patriarch; to
Daruma he cried,

41 Please put my soul at rest!"

£ M •£'

. * Just as some insects live on the dry wood of old furniture,
and as many spiritual lives have been sustained on the most
arid dogmas of Christian theology, so when E-N6 and hun¬
dreds of thousands of others read those words of the Kongo*
Kyo, all the deep-hidden, latent poetry and religion burst out
of their hearts. From this central thought of rest through
freedom from the illusion of a self come such lines as,

The clear streams never cease their flowing;

The evergreen trees never lose their green.

i# ** IWK» 27? It Wo’

The flowers abloom an the hill are like brocade;

The brimming, mountain lake is black as indigo.

Ill 7E W U m ?k !m Mo (&a i;_v)

RELIGION IS POETRY

29

The poetry, the religion of these you bring with yourself; there
is no spoon-feeding here. A more extreme example is,

Day after day the sun rises in the east;

Day after day it sets in the west.

0 0 0 4i fiU HI H 0 WSc (ft ft 6j ft)

which is more striking in the original. This seems very tame,
but is as full of tragedy as Macbeth's

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to clay.

It is as full of hope as Wordsworth’s Stepping Westward,

with the thought
Of travelling through the world that lay
Before me in my endless way.

Coming to Japanese literature, we have,

Because of Spring,

This morning a nameless hill
Is veiled with mist.

i * § m©«a

The first snow :

The leaves of the daffodils
* Are bending. '

mn* a fin nmoiutts * -e

Gazing at the flowers

Of the morning glory,

I eat my breakfast.

a 3 & a \z « » m < * * t z ms

all bv Basho, all poetical in the sense of crying aloud for a
poetical reader; all religious, though with no mention of God
or Buddha, Heaven or Hell, and no thpught of them.

30 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

This austerity of feeling is in no way due to lack of poetry
or religion but to precisely the opposite; beauty is in the eye
of the beholder. This was the basis of Wordsworth's plea for
the abolition of poetic diction and the choice of the simplest
subjects from daily life. Nevertheless, we do not wish to
fall into the opposite error of neglecting the poetical. For
example, when we read Christianity and Buddhism, by T.
Sterling Berry, we find prejudice and cant, no love of truth, no
understanding of Buddhism, and, a natural corollary, no real
understanding of Christianity itself, but suddenly he ends a
chapter,

We are the children,of God, called to glorify Him on earth
by lives of lowly service and of willing obedience, and des¬
tined hereafter to see Him as He is, and to be made like
unto Him in His eternal and everlasting Glory,

and we cannot help feeling, in these echoes of the majesty of
the Bible, that he has proved his case after all.

Do not distrust this feeling: hold fast to it. All our troubles
come from disregarding the still small voice that speaks so
often, and so often in vain. We read Martin Chuzzlewit and
find Mrs. Gamp irresistible, unforgettable, overwhelming, but
dismiss her as a mere comic character. So here, these resound¬
ing words, taken literally and unpoeticalfy, are nonsense, un¬
scientific, impossible. But they are not empty rhetoric. Their
real meaning is that of the dryest and most prosaic sutra.

But poetry, by creating, through words, a new world of
the imagination, is in great danger of forgetting the real world.
This is the Way of Poetry for Keats.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou amongst the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit smd hear each other groan*

RELIGION IS. POETRY 3i

These fou^4ines are bad poetry and bad religion. It is a way
that lea<J<$ nowhere, except

back from thee to my sole self.

Yet Keats had an instinct that religion was to be found in
poetry, poetry iri religion, expressed in the line, hackneyed out
of almost all meaning,

Beauty is truth, truth beauty.

Taken unpoetically, unreligiously, the line is a manifest false¬
hood. What Keats meant was that the further into beauty we
go, the more we make it our own, the more our life is im¬
mersed in beauty, the nearer we are to reality. Thus a mathe¬
matician will speak of a “beautiful proof” of a theorem in
algebra or geometry, and this overlapping of the aesthetic
and scientific realms is an indication of their ultimate and fun¬
damental identity.' When therefore we say that religion is
poetry and poetry is religion, we mean that it is so whether we
realise it or not, and that from the beginning, these two being
one, our distinction of Reality into Religion and Beauty is both
baseless in fact and destructive to both. One drys up into life¬
less dogmas, the other vapours into groundless phantasies. In
the history of Buddhism and Christianity, we see the same
thing; the one too rarefied, too true for acceptance by ordinary
people, the other overlaid with so much emotion and symbol¬
ism that the true and the false were inextricably mixed. In
this sense Zen is essentially aristocratic; it calls for asceticism
in all the human activities. 'For Zen, Peter Bell is in the right
and Wordsworth in the wrong.

A primrose by a river’s brim
A yellow primrose was to him.

And it was nothing more.

32 ZEft'tN ENGLISH LITERATURE

To a poet, the primrose is enough, just as it is, without pluck¬
ing the flower out of the crannied wall, without thinkmg about
what God is and what man is; The yellow primrose on the bank
of the river is what it i^ and nothing more whatever. But for
Wordsworth, in his weakest, most unpoetic, most insincere
moments, the flower was nothing in itself :

To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Christ did not say any thing like this, partly because he was a
greater poet than Wordsworth, partly because he was not try¬
ing to compose poetry.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.

Just look at them, that is enough. Buddha went one better
than Christ, he only held up the flower in silence before the
congregation. (This silence is paralleled by Christ’s silence
before Pilate, the two great silences in the history of the world.)

These thoughts about things, this colouring of things by
the emotions, that is, the desires and antipathies of the mind,
—this is what Zen wishes us, above all things, to do away with.
Is then the aim of Zen to see things as God sees them? This
postulates three separate entities, I, God, the flower. We may
say that this Trinity is a Unity, we may say so, but it gets us
no ‘forrader/ Coleridge’s very unpoetical definition of poetry
as “ the best words in the best order ” 1 is pertinent here, for
religion may be defined as “ the best actions in the best man¬
ner/' By the “best actions/' we mean the best under those
circumstances, such as Nansen’s killing of the kitten (see end
of Chap. 21.) Christ’s cursing the fig tree,, and so on. But the

1 Stolen, like milch of Coleridge: this is Swift’s “Proper words in
proper places” (Definition of a Good Style)

RELIGION IS POETRY

33

essence of religion is contained in the words, “in the best man¬
ner/' Manner is the outward expression of our state of mind. 1
The poetical and the religious are identical states of mind, in
which every thing is seen to have its real value, that is, an
absolute value, which cannot be compared to that of any other
thing. To the religious, all things are poetical—eating, drink¬
ing, sleeping, going to the lavatory—not one more than an¬
other. To the poetical, all things are religious, every blade of
grass, every stick and stone, the butterfly and the intestinal
worms. The surgeon and the doctor achieve this condition in
their own sphere. To therj* no part of the body is clean, no
part is dirty, all have equal interest. To the musician there
is the same universality of outlook; the second violin is just
as important as the first, the drum and the piccolo no whit
inferior to any other instrument. This is beautifully expressed
in the following lines (the translation is very poor):

In the scenery of spring nothing is better, nothing worse;
The flowering branches are some long, some short.

m @ s* (»#«») *

But even if we admit that religion is poetry in some sense or
other, what about the statement that poetry is religion? In¬
stead of arguing about this in vacuo , let us take some poems
and consider to what extent this statement is true. In a later
chapter, “ Religious Poetry," poems whose subject is definitely
some religious aspect of life, are dealt with. Here we wish to
consider poems which have no ostensible connection with\e-

1 Compare Emerson’s description of an odd friend of his, in Society
and Solitude: '

He had a remorse running to despair, of social gaucheries, and walked
miles and miles to get the twitching out of his face, the starts and
shrugs out of his arms and shoulders. * God may forgive sins ’ he said,
* but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth

34

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

ligion whatever, poems which seem to be pure poetry, poetry
for poetry’s sake. Actually, of course, such a poem as Paradise
Lost would be the hardest example to take. To show that
Paradise Lost has any connection with real religion would be
a difficult task indeed. But what we are attempting to show
here is that the poetry of Paradise Lost and of Don Juan is re¬
ligion, equally,‘because absolutely; irrespective of subject, be¬
cause all subjects are equally poetical, all things equally re¬
ligious ;

For the good God who loveth us,

He made and loveth, all.

Remembering that religion means the finite become the infinite, 1
not in any vague and wooly sense, but in actual literal fact,
(since the finite and the infinite are originally 2 one) that it
means in other words, a unifying of oneself with each thing
and all things, or rather, the realisation that the thought and
feeling of separation from things is the Great Illusion, — let us
look at the following:

The youth of green savannahs spake,

And many an endless, endless lake
With all its fairy crowds
Of islands, that together lie
As quietly as spots of sky
Among the evening clouds.

Without the flowing streams and rolling waters, without the
depths of the sky and vast horizons, how could man ever have
conceived of his eternity, his infinity?

Ever onwards to where the waters have an end;

Waiting motionless for when the white clouds shall arise.

1 Compare the definition of religion given above, “ the .way we do
things." It is the infinite way we do finite things.

* This, of course, has not a temporal meaning here.

RELIGION IS POETRY

35

* Look again at Marlowe’s famous lines, apparently at the
very antipodes of religion:

Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ?

O thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.

But Dante understands Marlowe. Beatrice says,

Io veggio ben si come gia risplende
Nello intelletto tuo l’eterna luce,

Che, vista sola, sempre amore accende;

E s’altra cosa vostro amor seduce,

Non e, se non di quella alcun vestigio
Mai conosciuto, che quivi traluce.

I clearly see how the Eternal Light
Shines in your mind,

So that, upon its mere sight, love is enkindled.

And if some other (earthly) thing draw your love away,
Naught is it but a vestige of the Light,
Half-understood, which shines through that thing.

(Paradiso, V, 7)

Hakuin Zenji in his Zazemvasan tells us that

In all song and dance 1 is heard the voice of the Law.

m ^ i n & b & o) m

All beauty, all music, all religion, all poetry, is a dancing of the
mind. Without this dancing of the spirit there is no true Zen.
This joyful dancing before the Lord, is Beethoven’s 9th Sym¬
phony; it is expressed by Nietzsche in Am Mitterna^ht

1 This means, 1 all activities/ but are not song and dance, even of the
Moulin Rouge, activities of the Eternal Mind ?

And God fulfils himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

36 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Eins! O Mensch, gib acht!

Zwei! Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht ?

Drei! Ich schlief, ich schlief—

Vier! Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht!

Fiinf! Die Welt ist tief—

Sechs! Und tiefer, als der Tag gedacht.

Sieben! Tief ist ihr Well,

Acht! Lust—tiefer noch als Herzeleid!

Neun! Weh spricht: Vergeh!

Zehn! Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit—

Elf! Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!

Zwdlf!

Christ took upon himself our humanity, but according to the
dogmas of the Church, a perfect humanity. Kwannon, in a
similar, but more universal way, becomes Cleopatra, Helen pf
Troy, Guinevere isee Suzuki’s Essays in Zen, Illrd Series, page
370) She is, like Paul, “ all things to all men,” in order to save,
in a myriad different forms, the erring multitudes. Goethe
shares in this belief and in the last lines of Faust says,

Das Ewig-Weibliche
Zieht uns hinan.

Here is another example, from Measure foY Measure , to
prove, that is, to test the rule of the identity of poetry and re¬
ligion (I hope I am getting credit from the reader for choosing
the most difficult examples).

Take, O, take those lips away,

That so sweetly were forsworn;

And those eyes, the break of day,

Lights that do mislead the morn :

But rrty kisses bring again, bring again;

Seals of love, but sealed in vain, sealed in vain.

The music of the verse, its rhythm and cadence, touches the
heart like a symphony of Mozart, of which Schubert said that

RELIGION IS POETRY

3 ?

in it you could hear the angels singing. The thought ex¬
pressed is of the unrequited love of Mariana. If this emotion

of unavailing regret, of wasted hours and broken promises, of

*

desire for the impossible, for days that are no more, is nothing
to you, you are only saying,

What’s Hecuba to me, or me to Hecuba,

That I should weep for her ?

What are you to Stephen, or Stephen to you, that you should
weep for his being stoned to death ? Whether your hopes and
fears are for Mariana or Stephen or Hecuba or Christ, griefs
and hopes are one. So Wordsworth says,

My hopes must no more change their name.

Another example, from The Tempest:

Where the bee sucks, there suck I,

In a cowslip’s bell I lie.

4 Merrily merrily shall I live now,

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

In Zen writings we have the same Ariel, Puck-like, amoral,
absolute freedom, expressed in similar images:

We sleep with both legs stretched well out;

For us, no truth, no error exists.

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For long years a bird in a cage;

Now, flying along with the clouds of heaven.

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Puck says,

I’ll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes.

38 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

but the Master of Zen can do better than this.

He holds the handle of the hoe, but his hands are empty;
He rides astride the water-buffalo, but he is walking.

l M> P It 7k 'To

This world is more wonderful than the Hexenkiiche of Faust:

The stones rise up into the sky;

Fire burns down into the water.

*

Enough examples have been taken, perhaps, to show that
the degree of poetry is the degree of religion and vice-versa .
This degree depends in practice to some extent upon the sub¬
ject, for

ogni dove

In cielo e Paradiso, e si la grazia

Del sommo ben d’un modo non vi piove.

(Paradiso, III, 88.)

“Every place in Heaven is Paradise, but the Highest Good
does not rain down in one same fashion.” Take the following,
by a modern poet:

A piece of wood —

Bobbity, bobbity it floats down
The spring river.

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You must repress any possible tendency to make this symbolise
human life. It is the thing as it is, following its own nature,
with something in it unwontedly akin to the mildness and
tranquillity of a spring day. The same sun shines, the same
breeze blows in Buson’s untranslatable

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RELIGION IS POETRY

n

(The Spring sea;

Gently rising and falling
The whole day long*)

When the subject is vaster, as in Basho's
A wild sea,

And the Galaxy stretching cfut over
The Island of Sado.

ck ^ i

the poetry, the religion, is deeper; deeper still when man en¬
ters :

Beneath the cherry blossoms
There are no

Strangers.

It t£ fr *0 0 - %

It is evening, autumn;

I think only

Of my parents.

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and deepest of all when we contemplate the gods. At Nikko:
Ah* how glorious

The young leaves, the green leaves,

Glittering in the sunshine!

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At the Shrine of Is6:

The fragrance of some

Unknown blossoming tree
Filled all my soul!

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40 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

The gods in Japan are never far from the leaves and the flowers,
but like them, and like the piece of wood floating down the'
river, like the waves of the sea and the stars of the Milky Way,
they obey the law of their being. The net of the T aw catches
all the fish, big and little, not one can escape. Thus the dif¬
ference is of quantity, not quality; of potentiality, not absolute
worth; of use, not of essence. The world, a grain of sand,
eternity, an hour, — to see these as the same, is religion, is
poetry. But in the next chapter we shall see that religion
and poetry are identical in that they are both common sense,
everyday life, reality, the fact, the thing as it is.

CHAPTER III

POETRY IS EVERY-DAY LIFE

From Aristotle down to Arnold it was considered that a
great subject was necessary to the poet. Arnold says that the
plot is everything. It is useless for the poet

to imagine that he has everything in his own power;
that he can make an intrinsically inferior action equally
delightful with a more excellent one by his treatment of it.

Wordsworth stands outside this tradition by instinct and by
choice. He chooses the aged, the poor, the idiot, the vagrant,
but does not endeavour to make them “ delightful ” at all.
“ Nothing is inferior or superior, delightful or repugnant, but
thinking makes it so.” What becomes, then, of the great sub¬
ject? The answer is that on the one hand it is a concession to
human weakness, which sees the house afire over the way as
more thrilling than the fiames of the sun, a toothache as more
tragic than an earthquake or pestilence On the other hand, the
great subject is in its nature richer if only by mere quantity and
mass. The fact that Lear is a King, Hamlet a Prince, Othello
a General, and Caesar an Emperor, adds to the tragic force of
the action, though intrins 'cally, to borrow Arnold’s word, they
cire np more tragic than Jesus the Carpenter’s son. Neverthe¬
less, size is not meaningless. Even Soshi, the arch-absolutist,
points out that a cup cannot float in the quantity of water that
will support a poppy seed.

41

42

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

But it is the poet, the man, who decides the meaning, the rela¬
tion of quality to quantity. Thus Paul was converted by a
supernatural light from Heaven and the voice of the ascended
Christ; Kyogen, by the sound of a stone striking a bamboo.

To return to Wordsworth. Critics have often pointed out
his inconsistency of practice and precept in regard to diction,
but there are other contradictions more worthy of note. In
the Preface to Lyrical Ballads he has the following notorious
sentence:

The principal object, then, proposed in these poems
was to choose incidents and situations from common life,
and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was
possible, in a selection of language really used by men,
and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colour¬
ing of the imagination , whereby ordinary things should be
presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and further,
and above all, to make these incidents and situations inter¬
esting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously,
the primary laws of our nature.

44 To throw over them a certain colouring of the imagination”!
This is a phrase that Aust have worked incalculable harm to
English poetry during the next century and a half, though it
is directly opposed to Wordsworth's actual practice. Look at
the two following extracts and find if you can, 44 the colouring
of the imagination ” which is thrown over them:

No motion has she now, no force;

She neither hears nor sees;

Rolled round in earth's diurnal course
With rocks and stones and trees!

This trod the following are the greatest lines Wordsworth ever
wrote i

She died, and left>to me

This heath, this calm and quiet scene;

POETRY id EVERY-DAY LlEE 43

The memory of what has been,

And never more will be.

Wordsworth looks steadily at the object, and this is his great¬
ness, as it is also Shakespeare's. Again, what an unfortunate
phrase, “ to make these incidents and situations interesting/' ’
It suggests a cook adding condiments, a little bit of allitera¬
tion here, a bit of onomatopoeia there, some personification, a
paradox or two, and an unexpected, brilliant last line for the
critics to quote. 1 Wordsworth himself not only never does
this (or almost never; the Immortality Ode is rather suspicious
in places, and though successful, is still a tour de force) but
himself says,

0 Header! had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,

O gentle Reader! you would find
A tale in everything,

that is, poetry everywliere. Let us t*nke Michael as an example.

In this poem of four hundred and eighty two lines, there
are five or six lines of what is ordinarily termed poetry (quoted
in a succeeding chapter,) which might be overlooked, or rather,
taken with the rest, by an earnest and careful reader. This so-
called poem, then, is a piece of everyday country life, just as
Dickens' novels are descriptions of everyday life and everyday
city people. Two hard-working people had a son who was
a failure and fled abroad. They died. This is hot merely the
whole story, there is no account of their despair and grief,

1 It is both amusing and heartening to see how Matthew Arnold, to
the confusion of the critics, suddenly throws overboard all hi$, theories
and principles of art in an essay on Tolstoy.

The truth is we are not to take Anna Karenine as a work of art; we
are to take it as a piece of life.... The author saw it all happening
so—Saw it, and therefore relates it; and what kis novel in this way loses
in art it gains in reality .

44 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

not a word of it. Wordsworth avoids what would be called the
chances Which the story offers to wring the reader's feelings.
Yet we feel the majesty, the dignity of man more than in
Hamlet's most tragic speeches. Othello at his most poetic,
Lear at his most pathetic, Macbeth at his most desperate, have
not the grandeur of the old shepherd who

still looked up to sun and cloud,

And listened to the winds.

Why is this? It is'because the true poetic life is the ordinary
everyday life.

Of the Chinese poets Hakkyo-i (Po Chu-i) that is, Haku-
rakuten, and To-en-mei (Tao Yuan-ming) understood this fact
best of all. Ritaihaku (Li Po) Toho (Tu Fu) and most of the lesser
poets of the To \T'ang) dynasty, as represented in the Toshisen,
are “poetical ” poets. The following is by Hakurakuten:

I takc$#ur poems in jny hand and read them beside the

candle;

The poems are finished: the candle is low: dawn not yet

come.

With sore eyes by the guttering candle still I sit in the

dark,

Listening to waves that, driven by the wind, strike the

prow of the boat. 1

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There is great art in the selection of facts presented, but
no “colouring of the imagination"; the incidents and situa¬
tions are chosen “from common life." This is true also of the
first of a series of thirteen poems by Toenmei, entitled Reading
the Book of the Seas and Mountains.

* Waley’s translation.

POETRY IS feVERY-DAY LIFE 45

It is early summer: grass is rank, plants grow wildly,

And the trees round my house are in full leaf.

The birds rejoice in their nests here,

And I too love my dwelling-place as dearly as they.

I have ploughed my fields and sown them:

Now at last, I have time to sit at home and read my books!

The lanes are too narrow for fine carriages,

And even my old friends are often turned back.

Contentedly I pour out my'wine,

And partake of the lettuce grown in my own garden.

Borne on a soft eastern wind,

Light showers come.

Unrolling the Book of the Seas and Mountains,

I read the story of the King of Shu :

Gazing at sky and earth while yet we live—

How otherwise shall we take our pleasure here? 1

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In Ritaihaku the subject and treatment is always romantic;
the famous Crows at Twilight is typical;

Athwart the yellow clouds of sunset, seeking their nests

under the city wall,

The crows fly homeward. Caw! Caw! Caw! they cry

among the branches.

At her loom sits weaving silk brocade, one like the Lady

of Shinsen:

1 See Waley for a different translation, in some versions, is

with the same meaning.

46

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Their voices come to her through the window with its

curtains misty-blue.

She stays the shuttle; grieving, she thinks of her far-

distant lord:

In the lonely, empty room, her tears fall like rain.

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Ritaihaku had mystical leanings all his life, but especially in
his youth and old age. In the poem Answering a Question in
the Mountains he says,

I am asked why I live in the green mountains:

I smile but reply not, for my heart is at rest.

The flowing waters carry the image of the peach blossoms

far, far away:

There is an earth, there is a heaven, unknown to men.

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Compare this with Obata's translation in Li Po the Chinese
Poet , page 73.

Why do I live among the green mountains ?

I laugh and answer not, my soul is serene:

It dwells in another heaven and earth belonging to no man.
The peach trees are in flower, and the water flows on. . . .

i If we take this as referring to the woman and translate, “ mur¬
murs to herself,” it iff meaningless in the poem, spoils the connection, and
nullifies the title, which means literally, “ Crows cawing at nightfall.” It
is their cawing to each other which causes her tears to fall. Though Sw
is a Very long way from its subject, rather in the fashion of Ovid or
Horace, poetically speaking, this is the only possible interpretation, I think.
See Giles and Obata, and decide for yourself between them.

POETRY IS EVERY-DAY LIFE 47

Thfs is a translation by a Japanese, and, in a 9ense, better than
the original, but his translation of the third line is hardly pos¬
sible, I think. Also, seems to have a reference to Toen-
mei’s and means, withdrawn from this world, and

living in another, spiritual world. (See Giles, Gems of Chinese
Literature, Prose, page 104, The Peach-Blossom Fountain. The,
Earthly Paradise began where the river and the peach-trees
left off.) “ The peach trees are in bloom and the water flows
on,”—this is in the spirit of Zen but it is not what the Chinese
poet is thinking. Another title for this poem is
Answering an Ordinary Man in the Mountains . Many are
humble before God but proud before ordinary man. To Ritai
haku poetry was mysticism, Taoism, dreams, romance, glory.
He would have sympathised vnth Spenser who lived in the
same kind of age and had a similar view of life. He wished
to live in a world of poetry that was not this world of toil and
struggle.

' When we come to Japanese poetry, which means Bash6,
we find “Poetry is everyday life” in its purest form. Basho
could and did write “poetical” poetry of the-highest order.
Scattered throughout this book will.be found a great number
of this kind of poem; here are a few more:

The sea darkens:

Voices of the wild ducks
Are dim and white. 1

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The autumn tempest!

It blows along

Even wild boars!

1 Compare Gray's Ode on the Spring:

Yet hark, how through the peopled air
The busy murmur glows.

48

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

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The summer rains through the ages
Have left undimmed then,

The Hall of Gold.

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I heard theunblown flute

In the deep summer shadows
Of the Temple of Suma.

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This remarkable poem with its similarity to Keats'

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter: therei%re ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but more endear'd.

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.

had a not dissimilar origin and background. Basho visited
Sumadera in the summer and saw there the flute Atsumori
used to play in the castle before his death. In his heart he
heard its thin melancholy notes. There is the same thought in
the following:

Veil'd from sight today
In misty showers:

Still, Mt. Fuji!

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Whiter than the stones

Of the Stony Mountain,

The wind of autumn!

a m o)4i * *) a uncom,

The shell of a cicada:

It sang itself

Utterly away.

POETRY IS. EVERY DAY,LIFE

49

^ e & 4 © £ LJt-fcT^ipcDR

The summer rains :

All things hidden

But the long bridge of Seta.

li n Mo \z Jr <

But where Basho is at his greatest is where he seems most
insignificant, the neck of a firefly, hailstones in the sun, the
chirp of an insect, muddy melons, leeks, a dead leaf,—these
are full of interest, meaning, value, that is, poetry, but not as
symbols of the Infinite , not as types of Eternity , bat in them¬
selves . Their meaning is just as direct, as clear, as unmistak¬
able, as complete and perfect, as devoid of reference to other
things, as dipping the hand suddenly into ^piling water. The
mind is roused as with the sound of a trumpet. When you
read one of the following it is just like opening a door and
being confronted by a tiger. It is like suddenly seeing the
joke of something. It is like being unexpectedly reprieved
from the sentence of death.

The melons look cool,

Flecked with mud

From the morning dew.

ISSi: ijhT #bjH©±

Just washed,

How chill

The white leeks!

M ft < ft t> tz T ft b 3 f; ? ft

The hail-stones

Glance off the rocks

Of the Stony Mountain.

V Hi CO V C 1- U L b h Cj H j? 4

50

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

By day-light

The firefly has

A neck of red.

On the mushroom

Is stuck the leaf

Of some unknown tree.

(f 0 o <

With every gust of wind,

The butterfly changes its place
On the willow.

«C.< Ot C ft CD ® ft * 6 #p ft

Naturally, wh$n the distinction between the poetical and
unpoetical subject disappears, (to attain this state is the true
practical aim of a poet) foul is fair and fair is foul, to the pure
all things are pure, nothing is unclean.

The sound of someone

Blowing his nose with his hand;

The scent of the plum flowers!

ft 3 O'Afc

The sound of the nose-blowing, the scent of the flowers, which
is more beautiful? The first may remind us of a long-lost,
beloved friend; the second, of the death of a child who fell
from the bough of a plum-tree. Beethoven may have got the
motif of the first movement of the Fifth Symphony from some¬
one's blowing his nose. Underneath all our prejudices for and
against things, we must be free of them. This same freedom
from the id«a of dignity, that there are vessels of honour and
vessels of dishonour, is shown in the following, full of life and
truth:

POETRY IS EVERY-DAY LIFE SI

Look! the dried rice cakes

At the end of the verandah —

The uguisu is pooping on them !

£ WO) 3 S

More certainly than many things written in the Gospels,
Christ went to the lavatory? This action was no less holy and
no more symbolical than the breaking of, bread and drinking
wine at the Last Supper. Wherever bread is eaten, Christ's
body is broken. Wherever wine is drunk, His blood is shed.
But because of the hardness of our hearts we are tadght to
remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, Easter, Pentecost,
Christmas, Buddha's birthday, the Commemoration of Entering
into Nirvana, the Day Of His Enlightenment. These symbols
are only crutches to our weakness, milk for babes. For

Every day is a good day,

n as ft a

as Unmon said, every day is the best day, every moment is
the best moment, and thus,

Your every-day mind — that is the Way!

(«!")■*+*)

From morning to night, walking, eating, sleeping, praying,
living, dying,

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy
might,

and again.

Whether therefore ye eat of drink or whatsoever ye
do, do it all to the glory of God.

♦ «

One eye on the work, and one eye on God, one eye on the

52

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

object, the finite, and the other on the Infinite — this is not the
meaning. “With all thy might ” equals “the glory .of God,”
for as Blake says,

Energy is Eternal Delight.

The distinction between ideal and real, man and God, in¬
dividual and universal, poetry and matter of fact, ordinary life
and religion — it is this illusory distinction that Zen seeks to
break down. There is a saying attributed to Christ:

Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and
unto God the things that are God’s.

This has a fine eloquence, but leaves the mind unillumined
and uninspired. The things of Caesar are the things of God.
Sweeping a room, Caesar's room, is sweeping God's room.
There is a thrilling story told of Stevenson in this connection:

At Pitlochry, in 1881, when he saw a dog being ill-
treated, he at once interposed, and when the owner re¬
sented his interference and told him, “ It’s not your dog,”
he cried out, “ It’s God's dog and I’m here to protect it! ”

In English literature the best examples of the kind of
poetry which takes its material from the apparently trivial or
disgusting, are Shakespeare’s songs; for example,

When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail.

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail;

When blood is nipt, and ways be foul.

Then nightly sings the staring owl
Tuwhoo!

Tuwhit! tuwhoo ! A merry note!

While greasy Joan doth keel 1 the pot.

1 Cool, by stirring or otherwise.

fOEtRY IS EVERY-DAY LIFE 5*

When all around the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,

And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian’s nose looks red and raw;

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl—

Then nightly sings the staring owl
Tuwhoo!

Tuwhit! Tuwhoo! A merry note!

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

The last line, the refrain, is particularly noteworthy, because
it is an epitome of “ natural ” poetry, of the whole truth in art,
where selection and arrangement is everything and the mate¬
rial indifferent, because all equally good and useful. Look at
another example from Martin Chuzzlewit:

“I think, young woman,” said Mrs. Gamp to the as¬
sistant chambermaid, in a tone expressive of weakness,
“that I could pick a little bit of pickled salmon, with a
nice little sprig of fennel, and a sprinkling of white pepper.

I takes new bread, my dear, with jest a little pat of fresh
butter, and a mossel of cheese. In case there should be
such a thing- as a cowcumber in the ’ous, will you be so
kind as to bring it for I’m rather partial to ’em, and they
does a world of good in a sick room. If they draws the
Brighton Old Tipper here, I takes that ale at night, my
love; it bein’ considered wakeful by the doctors. And
whatever you do, young woman, don’t bring more than a
shilling’s-worth of gin and water-warm when I rings,the
beli a second time; for that is always my allowance, and I
never takes a drop beyond! ”

To explain-the Zen, the religion, the poetry of this would
be as difficult as to explain the humour of it: you either see it
or not. Mrs. Gamp would be a match for any of the Ancient
Worthies such as Rinzai, Obaku, or Unmon, because she is
herself, she is true to’herself and therefore not fa’se to any¬
thing; she cannot be defeated by God, Nature, Circumstance,

-64 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

or their vice-regents, those who live by Zen. Mrs. Gamp is not
divided from the pickled salmon or the bottle which she asks
may be left

“on the chimley-piece, and let me put my lips to it
when I am so dispoged,"

as other people are by their notions of what is refined and
vulgar, the distinction of material and spiritual. From this
comes the gusto that is the hall-mark of Zen, of abundant life.
Look at one more of Mrs. Gamp's speeches, flattering the un¬
dertaker's wife with eternal youth :

“There are some happy creeturs” Mrs. Gamp ob¬
served, “as time runs back’ards with, and you are one,
Mrs. Mould; not that he need do nothing except use you
in his most owldacious way for years to come. I’m sure;
for young you are and will be. I says to Mrs. Harris,"
Mrs. Gamp continued, “only t’other day; the last Monday
evening fortnight as ever dawned upon this Piljian's Projiss
of a mortal wale; I says to Mrs. Harris when she says to
me, 4 Years and our trials, Mrs. Gamp, sets marks upon us
all.'—‘Say not the words Mrs. Harris, if you and me is to
be continual friends, for sech is not the case. Mrs. Mould,'

I says, making so free, I will confess, as use the name"
(she curtseyed here) “ is one of them that goes agen the
obserwation straight; and never, Mrs. Harris, whilst I've
a drop of breath to draw, will I set by, and not stand up,
don't think it."

Compare the words of this dirty, drunken, ghoulish, self-seek¬
ing, garrulous, greedy creature, with those.of the refined,
educated, idealistic poet William Butler Yeats;

Though leaves are many the root is one;

Through all the lying days of my youth

I swayed my leaves and flowefs in the sun;

Now I may wither into the truth.

POETRY IS EVERY-DaY Lift 66

Which of the two has more life, more guts, more Zen? Whose
view of old age and death is truer, those people who talk about

Reality as a number of great eggs laid by the Phoenix
and that these eggs turn inside out perpetually without
breaking the shell, 1

or those who like Mrs. Gamp and Falstaff and Gargantiia, say
with Dr. Johnson,

I look upon it that he who does not mind his belly,
will hardly mind anything else.

We eat hypocritically, wive in shame and stealth, talk of ideals,
fritter our half-lives away. Mrs. Gamp shows us up, but we
laugh to hide our feelings from ourselves; we laugh, as Byron
said, that we may not weep. It is worth noting, by the way,
that she comes into the story after about 400 pages; not as an
afterthought, butrlike life itself, when it happens. She grew
as naturally out of Dickens' soul, as a yellow crocus comes out
of the black earth in spring.

To return to Shakespeare. One of his songs,

Full fathom five thy father lies,

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:

Hark! now I hear them,—

Ding, dong, bell.

is compared by Charles Lamb to a song of Webster's:

Call for the robin redbreast and the wren,

Since o'er shady groves they hover,

1 A Vision, by W. B. Yeats, Introduction by Owen Ahern£, prfge xxiik

56

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men;

Call unto his funeral dole

The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole

To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm

And (when gay tombs are robb'd) sustain no harm;

But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men,

For with his nails he'll dig them up again.

Lamb says of them,

As that is of the water, watery; so this is of the earth,
earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling, which
seems to resolve itself into the element it contemplates.

Shakespeare resolves himself into water, Webster into earth,
Mrs. Gamp into pickled salmon, Stevenson into a dog, Buddha
into a flower, Gu-tei 1 into his own finger, Basho into a frog.

But in this kind of thing there is a great danger again, of
poetry losing contact with facts, and as Mrs. Gamp herself states,

Facts is stubborn things and can't be drove.

>

Poetry is not only ordinary life, it is common sense. Georgias
Leontinus, quoted by Aristotle, said,

Humour is the only test of gravity, and gravity of
humour. For a subject which will not bear raillery is
suspicious; and a jest which will not bear a serious exami¬
nation is certainly false wit.

In the same way, poetry and common sense test each other.

Here, with green Nature all around,

While that fine bird the skylark sings,

Who now in such a passion is

He flies by it and not his wings,

says Davies, and this is true, and the fact is poetry.

1 WJM* #HJ«o

POETRY IS EVERY-DAY LIFE

57

Contrast Andrew Young’s March Hares . This could never be
countenanced by Zen, because not by common sense; it is not
poetry because it is false.

I made myself as a tree
No withered leaf twirling on me;

No, not a bird that stirred my boughs,

As looking out from wizard brows
I watched those lithe and lovely forms
That raised the leaves in storms. 1

I was content enough,

Watching that serious game of love,

That happy hunting in the wood,

Where the pursuer was the more pursued,

To stand in breathless hush

With no more life myself than tree or bush.

If you make your4plf as a tree, you can’t watch hares. You live
the life of a tree, dimly aware of day and night, the passage of
the seasons. If you become a tree ; you must become a tree and
done with it. If you say the above verses mean, “ I watched
the hares as a tree would watch them if it could do so,” you
are only talking like the natural philosopher who asked, “How
much wood could a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could
chuck wood?” If you are going to watch hares, you must
forget yourself and whether you are “content” or discontented,
“breathless” or otherwise. You must forget to compare your¬
self to a tree, and tell people your brows are “wizard,” what¬
ever that means. You must become a hare and done with it,
and the poem that comes out of that experience will be worth
reading. This is just like M. Duthuit’s Chinese recipe for
painting bamboos; 2

1 Second verse omitted.

2 Quoted in Suzuki’s Zen Buddhism and its Influence on Japanese
Culture.

58 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Draw bamboos for ten years, become a bamboo, then
forget all about bamboos when you are drawing.

When Basho looked at an onion, he saw the onion; when
he looked at the Milky Way, he portrayed the Milky Way;
when he felt a deep unnameable emotion, he said so. But he
did not mix them all up in a vague pantheistic stew or symbolic
potpourri. In poetry, as in life itself, distinctness, the individual
thing, directness is all-important.

CHAPTER IV

DIRECTNESS IS ALL

Zen is above all things direct; no intermediaries, no medi¬
ators between God and man, no symbolism. Emerson says in
Self Reliance,

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so
pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps.

Zen would not say it is profane or holy to do anything,
nor would it say that the so-called helps ire hindrances. All
things are ends in themselves. This truth is easy to grasp,
difficult to retain; a moment's inattention and we do as Prof.
Suzuki does in his Buddhist Philosophy and its Effects on the
Life and Thought of the Japanese People, where he says, ex¬
plaining the meaning of a Buddhist kuyo in regard to a painter's
worn-out brushes,

It is no doubt a lifeless instrument constructed by
human hands, and we can say that there is no “soul" in
it, whatever we may mean by this term. But the fact is
that the brush is an extension of the painter's own arm,
as every human instrument is, and as such it is endowed
with life, for with it the painter can express himself and
give spirit to his works. The brush in the hands of the
painter is surely possessed of life and spirit.

This is not so. The brush has its own existence; it exists
for and in itself, whether used or usable or not. When worn
out and thrown into the dustbin, its absolute value is un¬
changed. So Wordsworth, speaking of the Thames, says,

60 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

It glideth at its own sweet will,

apart from whether it is used to float vessels, to create elec¬
tricity, as drinking water, or as the subject of Wordsworth’s
poem. This was the opinion of Kant and of Goethe.

Die Ansicht, dass jedes Geschopf um sein selbst willen ex-
istiert, und nicht etwa der Korkbaum gewachsen ist, damit
wir unsere Flaschen pfropfen konnen: dieses hdtte Kant
mit mir gemein, und ich freute mich, ihm hierin zu be-
gegnen. (Eckermann, Gespriiche mit Goethe , April, 1827)

* /

Dean Inge makes precisely the same mistake but at the
other end of the scale. He says in Personal Idealism and
Mysticism,

It seems to me that Truth and Beauty are ideals too
august to be ever regarded as means only. Science and
Art are both false to themselves if they suffer themselves
to be mere handmaids of morality.

As I said above, the corpse of a bed-bug, the parings of the
fingernails, are too august to be treated as means. There are
no means in this or any other world. But from another point
of view we must say that Truth and Beauty are nothing in
themselves; they can never be ends. What is the end of man?
Wordsworth says, rushing in where angels fear to tread.

Our destiny, our being’s end and home
Is with infinitude and only there.

Maybe; but also,

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands
and feet,

says Tennyson; then let Wordsworth himself amend it to
With hope it is, hope that can never die,

I DIRECTNESS IS ALL

61

Effort and expectation and desire.

And something evermore about to be.

But hear what the angel said one thousand three hundred years
before Words\vorth w^s born:

Plucking chrysanthemums along the east fence;

Gazing in silence at the Southern Hills;

The birds dying home in pairs
Through the soft mountain air of dusk—

In these things there is a deep meaning,

But when we are about to express it,

We suddenly forget the words.

«as & wm

m ft p 9 4P:

Jib 4i R ,ffi fci & 74 (W ffl OH)

Truth, Reality, is inexpressible in words,—and yet it is ex¬
pressed in words! It is expressed, if we can hear it, in all the
sounds and sights of this world. Blake says,

The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging
of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions
of eternity too great for the eye of man.

It is expressed also ill the simplest conversation, if only we
can forget, for even a moment, th$ purely intellectual content
of the words, and listen to the voice of eternity.

A certain monk said to Hogen,

44 I, K-cho, ask you, 4 What is the Buddha? * ” >

Hogen answered, 44 You are E-cho."

m IRJ & AK-o S « ft »l U tn fnj &

m m Bo & & m m 0

. ^

The monk wanted to understand the Nature of the Uni¬
verse, the Secret of Life, its Meaning. Hogen says, 44 All these

62 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

things will be added unto you, once you know, 'Who is E-Cho?
Who am I?- And I will tell you the answer at once, without
beating about the bush, the answer to the whole Riddle of
Existence:

You are E-Cho!”

As Engo says,

How the spiritual war-horses of past times sweated
blood to attain this state!

ft m rf ffi M A Wto (*f M -fcO

It is just this directness, this perfect sincerity, which is so dif¬
ficult to attain. In order to reach this state, two things are
necessary, one negative, the other positive. First, we must
realise that for the understanding of the meaning of Life (which
is no different from that of our own life) it is useless to rely on
the intellect working alone; and that since the intellect Has
got into the habit of working by itself, acting like a dictator
to the rest of the personality, it must, temporarily, be put into
a strait waistcoat. Second, that we are to do what Confucius
said in The Great Learning, that the superioisman does,

In all things, he does his utmost.

5ft T* M m T' ft m (A ¥. r > bo

Here is an example of how the superior man plays billiards
for the first and last time :

Once only do I remember seeing him play a game of
billiards, and a truly remarkable performance it was. He
played with all the fire and dramatic intensity that he was
apt to put into things. The balls flew wildly about, on or
off the table as the case might be, but seldom indeed ever
threatened a pocket or got within a hand's breadth of a
canon. “ What a fine thing a game of billiards is," he re^

DIRECTNESS IS ALL

63

marked to the astonished onlookers,

“ — once a year or

Let us take the first poem in the Golden Treasury, Nash’s
Spring, from Summer's Last Will and Testament:

Spring, the sweete spring, is the yeres pleasant King,

Then bloomes eche thing, then maydes daunce in a ring,
Cold doeth not sting, the pretty birds doe sing,

Cuckow, jugge, jugge, puwe, towittawoo.

The Palme and May make countrey houses gay.

Lambs friske and play, the Shepherds pype all day,

And we heare aye birds tune this merry lay,

Cuckow, jugge, jugge, puwe, towittawoo.

The fields breathe sweete, the dayzies kisse our feete,
Young lovers meete, old wives a-sunning sit:

In every streete, these tunes our ears doe greete,

Cuckow, jugge, jugge, puwe, towittawoo.

Spring the sweete spring.

Several times, when collecting best pieces of English Poetry
(the intelligent young man’s substitute for a diary) I hesitated
over this poem, but finally, not following my instincts, excluded
it. It has no purple patches, no exquisite epithets, nothing to
mark the chooser of it as a poetical highbrow. And look at
the last line of each verse f Who would dare to read such a
poem aloud ? But it breathes the spirit of spring as no other
poem in the English language. Let us take another on the
same subject by Blake:

O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down
Thro’ the clear windows of the morning, turn
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,

Which in full choir hails thy approach, 0 Spring!

I Lift of Stevenson, by Graham Balfour,

64

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

The hills tell each other, and the listening
Vallies hear; all our longing eyes are turned
Up to thy bright pavillions: issue forth,

And let thy holy feet visit our clime.

Come o’er the eastern hills, and let our winds
Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste
Thy morn and evening breath: scatter thy pearls
Upon our love-sick land that mourns for thee.

O deck her forth with thy fair fingers; pour
Thy soft kisses on her bosom; and put
Thy golden crown upon her languished head,

Whose modest tresses were bound up for thee!

Comparing Nash’s poem with Blake’s, is like comparing
bread and butter with a chocolate Eclair. The Eclair has its
virtues no doubt, but?eclairs are bad for the complexion; what
is more important, they spoil the appetite; and what is most
important, they spoil the taste. Zen reminds us that “ direct¬
ness is all.” It is with Zen as with virtue; according to Bacon,

It is like a rich stone,—best plain set.

Look at the end of Francis Thomson’s Ode after Easter:

Reintegrated are the heavens and Earth!

From sky to sod,

The world’s unfolded blossom smells of God.

That’s the trouble. Everything is spiced up until it fairly
stinks of God. They can’t leave it alone, they can’t just take
it as it is. I dread the coming of the day when everything
will smell of Zen; tongues in trees, books in the running
brooks, sermons in stones, and Zen in everything.

When we say Zen is vitally concerned with directness we
must not make the mistake of supposing that Zen has any

DIRECTNESS IS ALL

65

objection >to such a-poem as Keats* Ode to a Nightingale, on
the ground that there is practically nothing, in eighty lines,
concerning the nightingale itself. Take, for -example, the
second verse :

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool*d a long age in the deep-delved earth.

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, <

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim.

What is the subject of this verse? It is an unreal, so-called
poetical World, in which life is beauty and joy everlasting.
This is expressed as directly, as concretely, as Nash’s Spring,
perhaps more so. The subjects, then, of Nash’s poem and
Keats’, are different; one is the Spring of this world, of Eng¬
land : the other is the Eternal Spring, the Eternal Nightingale
-which sings

Not a senseless tranc&d thing
But divine melodious truth;

Philosophic numbers smooth,

Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.

The directness of Nash and Keats is undoubted, but the subject
of Keats’ poem is a dangerous one indeed. The road where

daisies are rose-scented,

is a road that leadeth to destruction, and that nightingale
Procuress to the Lords of Hell,

66 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

The Nightingale Ode .is Keats' answer to the question,
“ What can Art and beauty do for the pains of life ? ” and con¬
cludes that beauty, that is,

the fancy, cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do.

What then becomes of

Beauty is truth, truth beauty?

In the history of Zen itself we find the cult of directness
carried so far, that Tai-E in the 12th century actually burned
and destroyed the great text book of Zen, the Ifekiganroku .
This may seem like the Burning of the Books by Shi-ko-tei
in BC. 213, but was utterly different. The Zen monks
of that time were people who knew everything, they knew
what life and death, God and man were,

And why the sea is boiling hot.

And whether pigs have wings.

They were the people of whom it is written,

They went to sea in a sieve they did,

In a sieve they went to sea;

In spite of all their friends could say,

but they were anxious lest their friends should mistake the
finger for the moon it was pointing at, so they cut it off. To
prevent people from mistaking the expression in words of the
truth, for the truth itself, they went to the same extreme as
the Jews did in regard to graven images. This was in accord¬
ance with an over-literal interpretation of the Four Statements
of the Zen Sect, 1

DIRECTNESS IS ALL

67

1. A special transmission outside the scriptures.

2. No depending on books or words.

This is the condition of a poet. Keats writes of himself,

A poet is the most unpoetical thing in existence, — be¬
cause he has no identity. 1

The setting sun will always set me to rights, and if a
sparrow come before my window, I take part in its ex¬
istence and pick about the gravel.

His books, his body, his soul—all is gone; he so empty that he
can contain anything, everything. He has got to the state of

3. Direct pointing to the soul of man.

4. Seeing into one’s nature and the attainment of
Buddhahood.

that is, seeing into the nature of the Sun and attainment of
Sparrowhood. I*f you ask “ What is the connection between
Buddhahood and Sparrowhood ? ” remember Tennyson’s

Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies;—

Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,

Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,

I should know what God and man is.

But a Zen master might take the flower and crush it, and ask,
1 Compare,

The butterfly having disappeared,

My spirit

Came back-to me.

mm ‘j tr m.

Thi6 of course has some echo in it of Soshi's dreaming he was a butterfly,
and, on waking, “Am I a man who dreamed of being a butterfly; or am I
a butterfly dreaming myself to be a man?”

63 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

“Now do you know what God and man is?” The crushing of
the flower is like the burning of the text book.

It is hardly necessary to say that Zen has nothing to do
with symbolism. In fact it might be called the opposite of
Zen, and this is borne out by a perusal of what Symonds says,
in his The Symbolist Movement in Literature , of the various
French symbolists. Let them speak for themselves:

Gerard de Nerval;

“I was very tired of life.”

Villiers de lTsle-Adam;

44 As for living, our servants will do that.”

“ Moi, je vivais par politesse.”

Arthur Rimbaud;

44 Action is not life but a way of spoiling something.”

Paul Verlaine;

“The ennui of living with people and in things.”

St£phane Mallarm6;

44 A weariness, outworn by civil hopes, still clings,

To the last farewell handkerchief's last beckonings.”

Huysmans;

44 And art is the only clean thing on earth, except
holiness.”

Symonds himself (actually included in The Oxford Book

of Mystical Verse !)

Where shall this self at last find happiness?

O soul, only in nothingness.

Does not the Earth suffice to its own needs?

And what am I but one of earth's weeds?

But in all these poets there is something which, disciplined
by morality and Nature, appears as poetry in Wordsworth;
harmonised by comprehended experience, displays itself in the
plays of Shakespeare; subdued in the flesh, reappears in the
spirit of Buddha and Daruma. I'he French Symbolists singe
their wings and perish, but it is at a lamp

DIRECTNESS IS ALL 69

Which lighteneth every man that cometh into the world.

Nevertheless, they illustrate the fact that in the search for
truth, aesthetic or moral, poetical or scientific, a man takes his
life in his hands. 1 See, for example, Gerard de Nerval, who
wrote the following:

Homme, libre penseur! te crois-tu seul pensant
Dans ce monde ou )a vie delate en toute chose?

Des forces que tu tiens ta liberte dispose,

Mais de tous tes conseils Tunivers est absent.

Respecte dans la bete un esprit agissant:

Chaque fieur est une ame a la Nature £close;

Un mystere d’amour dans le metal repose;

“ Tout est sensible! ” Et tout sur son etre est puissant
Crains, dans le mur aveugle, un regard qui t’£pie!

A la mature meme un verbe est attache. . . .

Ne la fais pas servir a*quelque usage impie!

Souvetit dans I’etre obscur habite un pieu cache;

Et comine un oeil naissant couvert par ses paupieres,

Un pur esprit s’accroit sous l’6corce des pierres!

This may not be precisely Zen, but it is good Buddhism. The
Master of Zen says, “Jump into the foaming waves of the whirl¬
pool below! ” The monk jumps, and finds himself on his feet,
walking along the road that leads to his own home. With no
master, no tradition, no health of mind or body, we are liable
to jump and be found, like Gerard de Nerval, dead, hanging
by the Queen of Sheba's garter to the bar of the window of a
penny doss.

It should be noted however that Carlyle's conception of a

1 To a man who has not eaten
A globe-fish,

We cannot speak of its flavour. Taibai (d. 1842)
^ C < It « A i: tf ^ U Cltt® 10c * Jfc

(Globe-fish are often very poisonous)

70 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

symbol, which Symonds quotes with approval, is very different
from that of the Symbolists.

In a Symbol, there is concealment and yet revelation:
hence therefore, by Silence and by Speech acting together,
comes a double significance, fthis “ double," no doubt
means 11 doubly deep ”]

In the Symbol proper, what we can call a Symbol,
there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some
embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is
made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and
as it were, attainable there.

Zen does not like this talk of Finite and Infinite, visible and
invisible, Symbol and Reality, but through the mesh of words
we can see that Carlyle perceived, to some degree, that the
symbol is reality and reality is the symbol, and that the word
“symbol” is on a par with the word “unnatural,” meaning¬
less, since all things are natural. Or rather, it would be better
to say, it is like the word “ natural,” (which is also meaning¬
less, having no contrary) since there is nothing which is not a
symbol, “ a Symbol proper,” as Carlyle calls it.

Chapter V

SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE

We may distinguish four kinds of poetry :

1. The object treated objectively.

2. The object treated subjectively.

3. The subject (=the Poet himself as theme) treated
Objectively.

4. The subject treated subjectively.

Zen of course takes the attitude of 1 and 3, ordinary people be¬
ing in the state of 3 and 4, still wandering about in ignorance
of the laws of their being, which govern them even while they
wander in ignorance.

Lead me 0 Zeus, and Thou, 0 Destiny,

The way that I am bid by you to go.

To follow I am ready. If I choose not,

I make myself a wretch, and still must follow.

This is shown by Dante also:

E pronti sono.a trapassar lo rio,

Che la divina giustizia gli sprona
Si che la tema se volge in disio.

(Inferno, III, 124-6)
They are ready to cross the stream,

For Justice Divine so spurs them on,

That fear is changed to desjre.

Even by opposing the will of God we do it; the very fear of
death hastens its coming; dread of punishment is the punish¬
ment itself. In the same way, * subjective and objective ’ is a

71

72

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

false distinction, and we must never forget this fact as we make
it Nevertheless, the generality of people are in the condition
e^ressed by Emerson in,

Things are in the saddle
And ride mankind,

that is, though we speak of the subjective, introverted, senti¬
mental man as colouring the outside world, as if he Were the
master, in actual fact he is the slave of things. We don’t buy
a new neck-tie; the neck-tie buys us. A man who shudders at
the sight of a snake or licks his lips before a pretty girl, is
“ ridden ” by them, has no freedom or power. To contain
things we must empty ourselves:

He who would be first among you shall be your ser¬
vant.

The word “ subjective, 1 ” is used, then, to designate the
state of mind in which a man looks at the outside world, or at
himself, as he would like it to be. When Byron says,

And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,

Dewy with nature’s tear-drops, as they pass,

Grieving, if aught inanimate e’er grieves,

Over the unreturning brave,

he is speaking of Nature as it is not; Nature cares nothing for
the deaths of brave men or cowards. (Of course, Byron knew
this). When Mrs. Gufnmidge in David Copperfield says of her¬
self,

“J am a lone, lorn creature, and everythink goes con¬
trary with me,” 1

1 Dickens knew what was wrong with Mrs. Gummidge and a great
9 many other people, and he knew the remedy:

Steerforth left her so Utile leisure for being miserable that she said next
day she thought she must have been bewitched.

SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE

73

she mistakenly supposes herself an object worthy of pity.

Here I give examples of each of these four types of poetry,
from (a) The Bible (b) the literature of Zen (c) Japanese liters
ture (d) English literature. Actually, in Zen, I and III are of
course undifferentiated.

I THE OBJECT TREATED OBJECTIVELY

(a) For, lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and

gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the
singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard
in the land. Song of Solomon, ii, II, 12.

(b) When Fu-ketsu was asked by a monk how to free
onese’f from relativity, from the absolute, he answered,

I often think of Ko Nan in the month of March;

The partridge chirps among the scented flowers.

i< tt ii- Iff H )i Krfi ft JU U VE fir

m iwi # ^ + a in)

(c) By the roadside,

A Rose of Sharon;

The horse has eaten it. ,

m a it 0) is < (> 14 ttb C < U il \f *) tS ffi

iThere is colour, there is movement; the horse’s strange,
rubber-like nose nuzzling the flower; no poet anywhere to be
seen.)

The peony has fallen;

A few scattered petals

Lie one on another.

«:»■» O T 3 tt f) to r H 15'

Fleas, lice,

The horse pissing close by,—

A lodging for the night.

74

' ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

it k 0) hi 1“ Z> ft yc s K

(The lotus does not hate the mud from which it arises’and
to which it returns.)

A summer shower;

The rain beats upon

The heads of the carp.

? 3 1 \z 5 it h h ffi. o) hit & ir & * &

(d) In English poetry, almost all of Chaucer; Shakespeare’s
songs (“ When icicles hang by the wall,” is the greatest master¬
piece of this kind); Keats' Ode to Autumn; much of John Clare,
whose Young Lambs follows:

The spring is coming by many a signs;

The trays 1 are up, the hedges broken down,

That fenced the haystack, and the remnant shines
Like some old antique fragment weathered brown.
And where suns peep, in every sheltered place,

The little early buttercups unfold
A glittering star or two—till many trace

The edges of the blackthorn clumps in gold.

And then a little lamb bo'ts up behind

The hill and wags his tail to meet the yoe,

And then another, sheltered from the wind, .

Lies all his length as dead — and lets me go
Close bye and never stirs but baking lies,

With legs stretched out as though he could not rise.

II THE OBJECT TREATED SUBJECTIVELY

(a) Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the

Devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he
may devour. 1 Peter V 8.

(b) Hyaku-jo called his monks together and said, “ He
I Hurdles.

SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE fS

who can answer my question best shall be head of the
temple of I-san.” He brought a water-bottle and set it in
the midst of them. “ Do not call this a water-bottle; what
will you call it?” Ka-rin, the head monk, said, “It can't
be called the stump of a tree.” y

KfTBS. *«*«*»«• -ST**

K. * "J Hfe ft: * ifio (ft n 88. H +)

Karin forgot or did not understand what Roshi (Laotse) had
told him a thousand years before: *

The name that can be named is not an eternal name, 1
ft "T ft # » «

He was thinking, “If I can't colour it with the name of ‘bottle/
what name shall I colour it with? ‘Tree-stump' seems a worse
colour than 4 bottle.’ In what relation to myself can I express
this wretched water-bottle ? ”

(c) The morning glory too
Can never be

My friend. '

m :tlU 1- Ik 1C fc Cj + « ffi

(Living in poverty at the end of an alley.

9t M ^ o f: r. ft JB L. C)

The cool breeze—

Crooked and meandering
It comes to me.

<& ft CO jiij C) < to iy b - *

(It goes without saying that it was Issa's heart that was
crooked.)

1 Compare Eckehart:

So wenig man fur Gott einen eigentiichen Namen finden mag,
so wenig kann man der Seele eigentiichen Namen finden.

76

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

How beautiful

The usually hateful crow, 1
This snowy morning!

0 m € < S & 6 S CD * L 1z ^ 4'

In the spider’s web

Hang butterflies dead—

A grievous sight!

ft C WJ « t, 0) f> U iti)'t£ * ft

(How about the dead fish and dead animals in his own
larder ?)

(d) In the following lines from the beginning of Act IV
Sc. 1 of King Henry the Sixth, Part II, we see the conscious use
of the pathetic fallacy:

The gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful day
Is crept into the bosom of the sea;

And now loud-howling valves arouse the jades
That drag the tragic melancholy night;

Who, with their drowsy, slow, and flagging wings,

Clip dead men’s graves, and from their misty jaws
Breathe foul contagious darkness in the air.

Contrast this with the following, supposed to be written
about Buddha; he is all “dolled up,” painted and powdered
with the writer’s pretended emotions:

Lord Buddha, on thy lotus throne,

With praying eyes and hands elate,

What mystic raptures dost thou own,

Immutable and ultimate ?

What peace, unravished of our ken.

Annihilate from the world of men ?

It is this kind of thing that makes English people fight shy

i Of course, this may be interpreted as, “hated by most people,” ex¬
cluding the poet himself

SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE . 77

of Buddhism. It may be thought that much of Ilardy’s poetry
belongs to this class, but not so, for in Hardy the colouring of
the mind is conscious, and artistically controlled. In fact, we
can say that this colouring of the mind, treated as an object, is
the real theme of many of his poems. In The Garden Seat,

Its former green is blue and thin,

And its once firm legs sink in and in:

Soon it will break down unaware,

Soon it will break down unaware.

At night when reddest flowers are black,

Those who once sat thereon come back;

Quite a row of them sitting there,

Quite a row of them sitting there.

With them the seat does not break down,

Nor winter freeze them, nor floods drown,

For they are as light as upper air,

They are as light as upper air!

the separation of the object (the seat) and the colouring of the
mind (the ghosts) is here complete, and both are treated objec¬
tively. Compare Basho’s,

They say the pheasant
Eats the snake;

How fearful now, its voice !

* h Lm-TO>m ft

III THE SUBJECT TREATED OBJECTIVELY

(a) Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked
with us? Luke, XXIV, 32.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course,

I have kept the faith, 2 Timothy, IV, 7.

78 * ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

This objective * I' rises into a transcendent 4 T in
I am the light of the world,

i

and in the next example:

(b) A certain monk asked Hyakujo, 44 What is Truth ? 99
Hyakujo said, 44 Here I sit on Daiyu Peak! ''

min fnjs ^m ^* m **

(c) The cob ambles slowly

Across the summer moor;

I find myself in a picture. 1

jts ii < a < B kz >i & xc if -ft b ft

Now let's be off!

Let's go snow-viewing till
We tumble down!

k's'fr^W & t? ts ft

Leaves of the willow tree fall;

The master and I stand listening
To the sound of the bell.

n ft

(The ear full of sound; the heart full of silence; the com¬
munion of saints.)

(d) Shakespeare's sonnets; Wordsworth anywhere; Donne.
Here is an example from George Herbert, Life .

I made a posie, while the day ran by:

Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band,

1 Compare,

I gazed to my hearf s content at the scenery of Sh6shd,
Painting even my own boat into the picture.

# ft * m * m * a ft m m # « m

SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE 79

But time did beckon to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away
And wither’d in my hand.

My hand was next to them, and then my heart:

I took, without more thinking, in good part,

Time’s gentle admonitions
Who did so sweetly death’s sad taste convey,

Making my minde to smell my fatall day,

Yet sugring the suspicion.

Farewell, deare flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,

Fit, while ye liv’d, for smell or ornament,

And after death for cures.

I follow straight without complaints or grief,

Since, if my scent be good, I care not if
It be as short as yours.

IV THE SUBJECT TREATED SUBJECTIVELY

(a) And Jesus answered and said, “ 0 faithless and per¬

verse generation, how long shall I be with you? How
long shall I bear with you ? ” Matthew , xvii, 17.

(To box their ears all round, or call them names— that
would have been all right.)

( b) The Emperor Bu of the Ryo dynasty asked Daruma,
when he first saw him, “ I have erected temples, enrolled
monks: what will my merit be?”

m m m n a ®

9MB)

(c) The morning-glory #

Clings to the well bucket—

I get water elsewhere.

The action itself was all right, but we must say of the poem
what Chokei said to Hofuku, when the latter said, pointing at'
the mountains, “Is not this Reality? ”

80

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

“ It is, but it’s a pity to say so.”

m &uy rtwm 1 0

Contrast this with Robert Frost's poem, The Tuft of Flowers:

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared,

Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,

By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to hint ,

But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

Other examples, similar to that of Chiyo:

I sat in the shadows,

And bequeathed the chamber
To the bright full moon.

m e m t ft \z a m * o o u- & %

Behind me

I cast all my cares—

'1 he summer moon!

T- ft

Contrast this with

Hanging a lantern on

A blossoming bough—

What pains <1 took!

x * l t c 7 > r * /a o * ft

which has the true objectivity.

C d ) This is a Chamber of Horrors. The larger part of
Byron, a great deal of Shelley and Keats, nearly all Mrs. Brow-

SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE 81

ning, and all that she encouraged in her husband. Arnold is
not free from it, though he is always talking of the classics:

And I, I kffow not if to pray
Still to be what I am, or yield and be
Like all the other men I see.

To this happy band of pilgrims belongs Landor with his,

I 9trovewith none, for none was worth my strife,

but the pi&ce de resistance is Yeats’

Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths.

Inwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and the light and the half light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet;

- But I being poor have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

The first line is magnificent and the second little inferior, but
the jazz rhythm of the next two lines leads to the sentimentality
of the rest, from the confusion of which emerges the quavering
saxophone solo of the last line. There is nothing to equal this
in English Literature; but in case you have missed it, I quote
the following, from Milne’s Not that it Matters , The Diary
Habit:

Monday. ~ 44 Rose at nine and came down to find a
letter from Mary. How little we know our true friends!
Beneath the mask of outward affection may lurk unknown
to us the serpent’s tooth of jealousy. Mary writes that
she can make nothing for my stall at the bazaar as she has
her own stall to provide for. Ate my breakfast mechani¬
cally, my thoughts being far away. What, after all, is
life? Meditated deeply on the inner cosmos till lunch¬
time, Afterwards I lay down for an hour and composed

ZEN IN ENGLISH. LITERATURE

my mind. I was angry this morning with Mary. Ah,
how petty! Shall I never be free from the bonds of my
own nature? Is the better self within me never to rise to
the sublime heights of selflessness of which it is capable?
Rose at four and wrote to Mary, forgiving her. This has
been a wonderful day for the spirit. ,>

Note, by the way, that the use of the 1st person is no sign
of subjectivity, nor the use of the 3rd person a sign of objec¬
tivity. Chaucer's

Of alle the floures in the mede

Than love I most these floures whyte and rede,

Swiche as men callen daysies in our toun.

To hem I have “so great affection

As I seyde erst, whan comen is the May,

That in my bed ther daweth me no day
That I nam up, and walking in the mede
To seen these floures agein the Sonne sprede,

Whan hit upryseth erly by the morwe;

That blisful sighte softneth al my sorwe

is as objective as

April, April,

Laugh thy girlish laughter;

Then the moment after.

Weep thy girlish tears!

is subjective and sentimental.

The relation of Zen to Poetry concerns also the question
whether the poet finds, or creates the values which we know
by such names as Beauty, God, Truth, Reality. Let us ask
the poets themselves what they think of the question.

Coleridge, as one would expect of a poet-philosopher, is
all for the idealist position. In Dejection he says,

O Lady! We receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does Nature live.

SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE 83

Browning seems to agree with him:

To know

Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,

Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without. •

Wordsworth is at one with many modern philosophers in
speaking of

all the mighty world
Of eye and ear,—both what they half-create
And what perceive.

Shakespeare characteristically gives us both and lets us take
our choice; in Hamlet,

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes
it so,

and in Antony and Cleopatra,

I see men’s judgements are
A parcel of their fortunes; and things outward
Do draw the inward quality after them
To suffer all alike.

Shelley, in Adonais, gives a profounder answer than the others:

He is a portion of the loveliness
Which once he made more lovely.

Herbert's

I got me flowers to straw Thy way,

I got me boughs off many a tree;

But Thou wast up by break of day,

And brought’st Thy sweets along* with Thee,

is the most beautiful but needs Emerson’s words from Com
pensation,

84

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

i

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of
Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff

to resolve the dualism. In actual fact the dilemma of 'creation
or discovery ’ is, as hinted by Shelley, a purely verbal one, and
arises from the fact that the Intellect can survey only the in¬
tellectual data. The passion, the willing of the creating-dis-
covering which takes place, cannot be understood by the reason
working alone. This is why Buddha would never answer such
questions as, “Is the soul mortal or immortal? Is the universe
finite or infinite ?” Apd notice that this attitude has no con¬
nection whatever with that of the man who says, “ Yes there is
truth in everything: the truth lies between the two extremes,”

And finds, with keen discriminating sight,

Black’s not so black, nor white so very white.

Truth lies beyond the extremes, not in the middle; is beyond
good and evil, not partly both. Or, to express this in another
way, suggested to me by Prof. Suzuki, in connection with
“seeing into our own nature,” j&tt, poetry is the something
that we see , but the seeing and the something are one; without
the seeing there is no something , no something , no seeing. There
is neither discovery nor creation: only the perfect, indivisible
experience.

CHAPTER VI

CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT

Zen is not philosophy and has no philosophy. If you say
Zen is the Hegelian Absolute, the totality of all existence and
of all thought, it will say, “Thank you.” If you say it is
Pragmatism, truth is utility, a true belief is one that works, it
will say, “Why not?” If you call it Materialism, yes, there is
nothing of Supernaturalism 1 in Zen. If you call it Idealism,
yes again, everything depends on the mind. Determinism?
Buddhism is nothing if not deterministic. Free Will? The
will is everything in Zen. Zen is pluralistic ? It is bagiri-jigiri,
that is, acting according to the circumstances, at that moment,
in that place, for the world is a collection of a number of
things. Zen is mopistic; but

Do not become attached to the One.

- ft M ft «* * m

%-■

The question of Concrete and Abstract, then, is not a prob¬
lem of metaphysics, but a practical matter. In the life of ac¬
tion, the question does not arise; we deal only with concrete
things, with men and women. But slaves to some definition of
it, men die for Freedom, kill themselves for Honour, slaughter
millions in the name of Democracy or Communism. Zen
denies nothing, has nothing negative in it, but it says, “Beware
of Abstractions! ”

1 But, “ Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven,” is the heart
of Zen.

us

86

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

I could not love thee, Dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more

is a lofty, but dangerous, Pecksniffian doctrine.

Charity begins at home,

is a safer and better one. The danger is, of course, self-decep¬
tion. Johnson says,

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel

but it is also the first refuge of a great many good citizens.
Johnson is for the moment in strange company; Blake supports
him, in

He who would do good to another must do it Til Minute
Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel,
hypocrite, and flatterer.

We must not forget that, as Hobbes says,

Words are wise men’s counters,-—Aey do but reckon
by them; but they are the money of fools.

If words are so, much more are abstractions mere conveniences
of thought. But let us take some examples from English
poetry, first, the conclusion of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound:

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;

To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;

To love and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;

Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;

This like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;

This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT 8?

i

Charles Lamb, in a letter (August, 1824) to Bernard Barton,
says of Shelley’s “ nostrums/’ that they are

ringing with their own emptiness. Hazlitt said well
of ’em— Many are the wiser and better for reading Shake¬
speare,

(and one might add, Wordsworth and Chaucer,)
but nobody was ever wiser or better for reading Shelley.

Keats’ advice,

Load every rift with ore,

and Lamb’s criticism in the same letter,

His poetry is “ thin sown with profit or delight,”

point to the same fatal defect as Arnold’s

beautiful and ineffectual angel beating in the void his
luminous wings in vain,

in the essay on Byron and quoted from himself at the end of
the essay on Shelley.

We can stand a certain amount of abstraction; but not
too much. In Wordsworth’s Ode to Duty , the beginning,

Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!

i

'is vague and vast, but the ending,

The spirit of Self-sacrifice;

The confidence of reason give:

And in the light of truth thy Bondman
let me live!

trite and feeble. What remains in our memory is not the ab¬
straction Duty, but the particular things , Wordsworth himself.

S3 2EN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Me this uncharter'd freedom tires;

I feel the weight of chance-desires;

My hopes must no more change their name,

I long for a repose that ever is the same,

and

Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,

And fragrance in thy footing treads;

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;

And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are
fresh and strong.

It is this principle of. the sparing use of abstractions that
distinguishes Pope and Milton. Pope says,

Here blushing Flora paints the enamelled ground,
Milton, in Lycidas,

Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd'eyes
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,

and there is not much to choose between them; but Milton
continues,

Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,

The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,

The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet,

The glowing violet,

The musk-rose, and the well-attir’d woodbine,

With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head.

Compare this to Pope when he also is writing about particular
things:

In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,

The floors of plaister, and the walls of dung,

On Once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw,

With tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw,

The George and Garter dangling from that bed

cdNtRETE AND ABSTRACT ST

Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,

Great Villiers lies.

Christ is the greatest poet who ever lived and his concrete¬
ness is alarming. A man is not a hypocrite, he is a “ whited
sepulchre,” Herod is “ a hyena ”; as for a deceiver,

It were better that a millstone were hanged about his
neck and he cast into the sea.

When he has finished speaking, his speech full of salt, bread,
lilies, pearls, towers, the wind, he-says,

Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be
lost..

If we are going to have a God at all, let us have “ Our Father
which art in Heaven.” Look at Matthew Arnold with his

stream of tendency, by which all things seek to fulfil
the law of their being. *

In some way or other the abstract exists, no doubt, but the
point is that the mind does not desire the Abstract, it desires
the thing. So in the Summa Theologica , Aquinas says,

He who is drawn to something desirable does not de¬
sire to have it as a thought but as a thing.

If we want God, we want him as a Father, not as a stream
of tendency, and this is the secret of the. power of Christianity.
Its so-called anthropomorphism is nothing less than the nature
of the mind which cannot be satisfied with anything but whole
things. Evea the expression “stream of tendency,” isbetter^
than mere “tendency,” for we feel that the concrete word
“ stream,” though, only a metaphor, gives more peace to the
mind than the abstract word. In Zen this fact was early per*

$0 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

ceived, and nothing more distinguishes Zen from the other'
Buddhist sects than its emphasis on the concrete. Yet when
Daruma was asked by the Emperor Bu,

“What ,is the essence, the first principle, of the Holy
Teaching (of Buddhism) ? ”

mmm *h , inw&mmw-mo

Daruma replied,

“It is a vast emptiness, with nothing holy about it.”
ft ft B M Mo

The first part, “a vast emptiness,” seems a very un-Zen-like
answer, but we must remember the circumstances under which
it was made. It is the old distinction of faith and works,
Martha and Mary. The Emperor supposed that religion was
a set of doctrines which one believed and that, faith without
works being dead, his putting on the Buddhist surplice, ex¬
pounding the Hannyaparamita Hridaya Suira, promulgation
of edicts, building of temples and registration of monks, were
all a proper expression in action of his religious feelings. Da¬
ruma tries to correct this double fallacy, tries to cut off the two
heads of the dragon. “All this talking of religion, reading the
scriptures, setting up of temples, has nothing to do with true
religion; ‘the holy doctrine/ as you call it, has nothing holy
about it, no, nor anything not-holy. Give up your notions of
merit and demerit, gain and loss, for-Buddhism, and against-
Buddhistn, I and the doctrine, Reality and phenomena; these
are all abstracted from life. And in the degree that they are
, abstract, in that degree also they are unreal, non-existent,
hallucinations.”

Later in the history of Zen, the answer to “ What is Bud¬
dhism? ” became more and more concrete, from the tree in the

Concrete and AbsTRACf dl

garden, pounds of flax, toilet paper, to the most concrete of
all, kicks and blows. Such things, that are so round and per¬
fect that the intellect cannot get its teeth into them, were
found, in practice, to u clear the mind of amt.”

I give you the end of a golden string.

That is enough, just simply that; but then you must do some¬
thing,

Only wind it into a ball;

It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate
Built in Jerusalem’s wall.

What is the meaning of lifefTft all life, my life, your life?
The moment the question is asked, it has no meaning and of
course, no answer; no possible, no conceivable meaning. (In
the same way, the object of morality, as has been often noted
before, is simply -self-destruction, that is to say, the removal of
the opportunities to help and to do good to others.) Philosophers
wish to understand the universe; and when they have done
this, what then ? A blank. By some, this questioning as to
the meaning of life is called instinctive. It may be so, but it
is an unhealthy instinct, in the sense that when the souUs in
health and not morbid, it does not concern itself at all with
such problems. KmerSoirsays somewhere that we should Jive
in this world Jike healthy schoolboys who do not wonder where
their next meal is coming from, taking n o thought, for-the
morrow. 1 The “meaning” of life is a question of cause and
effect, that is to say, it is a question of time, of yesterday, and
today and tomorrow. It is unhealthy because it is a turning of
energy into improper channels, into negativity and doubt.

1 Ah, evening swallow!

My heart is full of

Fears for the morrow.

'92 2EN IN ENGLISH tlTERATUliE

If the sun and moon should doubt.

They'd immediately go out,

and when we say, “What is the meaning of my life?” the
spiritual life, spontaneously generated up to that moment, is
extinguished, the world is a darkness that can be felt. How¬
ever, the question has been asked; the man is sick, it is too late
to recapitulate the laws of health, he needs medicine. There
are many answers to the question; I give some of them below!

There-is (1) the optimistic: Browning's

The year's at the spring,

And day's at the morn;

Morning's at seven;

The hill-side's dew-pearled;

The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn;

God's in his heaven—

All's right with the world!

(2) the pessimistic: Macbeth's

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
„ To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, # out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

(Expressed so well, it seems not so bad after all.)

(3) the sentimental false: from Coleridge's letter to Charles
Lamb on the occasion of his sister’s killing, while insane, her own
mother. (Lamb asked for “ as religious a letter as possible.”)

CO NCRETE AND ABSTRACT

Your mother is in heaven. It is sweet to be roused
from a frightful dream by the song of birds and the glad¬
some rays of the morning. Ah, how infinitely more sweet
to be awakened from the blackness and amazement of a
sudden horror by the glories of God manifest and the hal¬
lelujahs of angels.

(4) the heroic: Henley's Invictus,

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbow'd.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

(Notice, in connection with what was said about subjective
and objective, that this poem would be intolerable in the
3rd person.)

(5) the jocular:

Nothing to do but work,

Nothing to eat but food,

Nothing to wear but clothes,

To keep from going nude.

(6) the despairing-hopeful of In Meriforiam ;

'94 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill.

But what am I ?

An infant crying in the night:

An infant crying for the ligfit.

And with np language but a cry.

(7) the resigned: Matthew Arnold's,

the mute turf we tread
The solemn hills around us spread,

This stream which falls incessantly,

The strange-scrawl’d rocks, the lonely sky,

If I might lend their life a voice, .

Seem to bear rather than rejoice.

(8) the desperate: Thomas Huxley thought so badly of the
whole business that

if some great Power would agree to make me always
think what is true and do «what is right, on condition of
being turned into a sort of clock, and wound up every
morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close
with the offer.

One point must: be noticed, before we go on to consider
how the solution of the problem may be arrived at, and that is
the fact that, as Voltaire says in Candide, ironically but truly,

Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes

possibles.

It is all very well to say,

Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits—and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!

or like Alphonso the Wise^ about Ptolemy’s astronomy,

CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT 9$

Had I been present at the creation, I would have given
some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe,

but how, in actual fact, would you improve it ? Do away with
pain and distress? Bernard Shaw says,

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it:
it would be hell on earth.

Do away with death? No Christianity, no Buddhism, no
Hamlet, no Divine Comedy, no Paradise Lost, no Beethoven, no
Bach — what should we be living for? As to whether the
agonies of life are worth all these works of art—that is an¬
other problem. Now the question simply is, how would you
personally make the world better, in any one single respect, re¬
membering that the slightest change in one part has far-reach¬
ing repercussions in every other. The problem of the meaning
of life is perhaps an external, or at least, externalised one;
there are many good and clever people who “do not wprry
their heads about such things.” For all, however, except that
very small class,

There are who ask not if thine eye
Be on them; who, in love and,truth,

Where no misgiving is, rely
Upon the genial sense of youth:

Glad hearts! without reproach or blot;

. Who do thy work and know it not,

there is the problem of conduct: how to get through thfe petty
annoyances of life and undergo the major operations of marri¬
age and death. How can we establish a harmony between our¬
selves and the outside world full of misunderstandings, deceit,
violence, and the suffering and death, of .those we loye, when
all the while we ourselves are full of that same stupidity, ia-
sincerity, cruelty and sloth ?

CHAPTER VII

THE UNREGARDED RIVER OF OUR LIFE

Matthew Arnold, in Empedocles on Etna, describes the des¬
perate struggle we make for freedom and harmony:

We would have inward peace,

Yet will not look within;

We would have misery cease,

Yet will not cease from sin;

We want all pleasant ends, but will use no harsh means.

Once read thy own breast right
And thou hast done with fears;

Man gets no other light
Search he a thousand years:

Sink in thyself! there ask what ails thee, at that shrine!

Since we know ourselves most intimately, most directly, is
it not inside, that the solution must be sought? And is it not
possible that if we could attain unity and order in the mikro-
kosmos that the problem of the makrokosmos might somehow
or other solve itself ? No, says Arnold,

Yet, even when man forsakes
All sin,—is just, is pure,

Abandons all which makes
His welfare insecure,—

Other existences there are, that clash with ours,

forgetting what Shakespeare said, that nothing clashes or
agrees with us, but thinking makes it so. What is this mind,
so overlaid with the rubbish of passion and the entanglements
o( thought, yet out of which come the

tryfeK 4 of our life

airs and floating echoes

that we call music, art,-religion ? Notice one thing before we
go on to speak of the search for mind. Ignorance, in Buddhist
terminology, Sin, Evil, in the Christian, that is, the state in
which

We do not what we ought,

What we ought not, we do,

may change, must change, will change the Adam and Eye
state of Original Enlightment of animals,

There is a power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,—

The desert and illimitable air,—

Lone wandering but not lost, 1

of children,

Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,

If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,

Thy nature is not less divine,

of idiots,

But when the pony moved his legs,

Oh! then for the pt>or Idiot Boy!

For joy he cannot hold the bridle,

For joy his head and heels are idle,

He's idle all for very joy,

into the state of Enriched Enlightenment which Buddha at¬
tained to. And this is both a hint at the solution of the prob¬
lem of evil, and an exposition of the Zen doctrine that, (trans¬
cending the category of time) the ordinary man is the Buddha,
thafcthis passional rubbish and entangling intellect is the Mind.
From the 16th century, the thought of Jhe importance of

1 Bryant: To a waterfowl. Compare Dogen’s poem, page 1.

$8 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

the mind enters into English Literature. We must be'careful
by the way, to distinguish, both in life and in art, talking about
Zen, and Zen itself. So in the following examples, Zen is being
alluded to, hinted at, dimly descried. (If we want to find Zen
itself, we may begin at Beowulf and speak of his Bushido.)
In the anonymous 16th century poem As ye came from the
Land, in the lines,

His desire is a dureless content
And a trustless joy:

He is won with a world of despair,

* And is lost with a toy,

false love, or the (superficial) mind is described; and in the last
verse, true Love, or the Mind:

But true love is a durable fire
In the mind ever burning,

Never sick, never dead, never cold,

From itself never turning.

Dyer says.

My mind to me a kingdom is.

(Puzzle: find the king.)

Milton, typifying the best (and worst) of Puritanism* speaks of

A mind not to be changed by place or time.

The mind is its own place, and in itself
.Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven

—so near the truth, yet with a suggestion of the impervious
water-tight self, unchanging, indestructible even by God hint-'
self; so far from the fluidity and self-lessness of love, that it
gives us a feeling pi death rather than of life, the same cold
feeling as in,

the unregarded river" of OUR LIFE $9

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;

The proper study of mankind is man.

We are taken much deeper by Shakespeare, when Jessica says,
Must I hold a candle to my shames?

going further and further down to

the insane root
That takes the reason prisoner,

until Macbeth asks,

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d,

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,

Rase out the written troubles of the brain,

And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

Not even God 1 can do this. The doctor answers,

Therein the patient must minister
to himself.

for years the 2nd Patriarch, E«ka, had been in the same con¬
dition, his bosom stuffed with doubts, his heart weighed upon
with sins of omission and commission. When he came to the
doctor, Daruma, he was told the same thing “This is not to be
sought through another.” I'JJb'&TPMi fit A Vh) 2 He then asked

that his mind should be set at rest, and when Daruma asked
him to bring his soul to have it set at peace, he was forced to
say/with Arnold,

1 Using the word in the unmystical, Father Christmas sense. In
actual fact, the Christian doctrine of Grace is identical with the Zen
principle of “ Direct pointing to the Soul of Man,” (ifrJfrA'C.*) and when
St. Juliana of Norwich says, in Revelation of Divine Love , “To seek God
without already having him, is of all things the most impossible,” she is
explaining the conversion of E-ka, given here,

* fquoted in

;m ■ '' ■ zm in

And long we try in vain to speak a:nd act
Our hidden Self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well, but ’tis not true.

In his own words,

“I have sought it but could not find it.”

n * r ^

Now was the question,

To see if we will poise our life at last,

To see if we will now at last be true
To our own true, deep-buried selves,

Being one with which we are one with the whole world;
Or whether we will once more fall away
Into some bondage of the flesh or mind,

Some slough of sense, or some fantastic maze
Forg’d by the imperious lonely thinking power.

But when Daruma said,

“ There! I have set your soul at rest for you! ”

« M ik * *

E-ka felt that transformation described as,

A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,

And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.

Everything depends on what Byron calls, in the Corsair,

The power of thought,—the magic of the mind.

Just open the door, and there you are. Emerson says, in Self
Reliance,

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

From such a point of view, how profound the words of
!’ Coventry Patmore become:

DARUMA AND EKA, by Sesshti.

If thy hand offend thee, cut it off amj cast it from thee.

Matt. V, HO.

Felicitas in eo consistit, quod bomo ®uum esse conservare potest.

Spinoza.

wpmMmm *«vt* *»

Resolve Jo be thyself, and know that he
Who "finds himself, loses his misery*

The man who finds himself, that is, Himself, loses both hi$
misery and his joy, but finds his Joy. And those words of
Polonius; heard for the first time merely sententious, then
hackneyed out of all meaning, now, most profound:

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not *then be false to any man.

To the Self be true: how can you then be false to anything ?
How can you be one

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm,

or feels contempt or hatred of the man who dbes so?

Before we go on to speak of the Mind, it is as well to refer
to the Buddhist doctrine that we are only appaiently a unity,
a stream of innumerable selves following one another like a,
series of cinematographic pictures, so quickly that they seem
one continuous whole (the Buddhist simile is a whirling rope
burning at one end, which thus seems to be a ring of fire).
This idea of many selves, which by the way, has no connection
with what is called multiple personality, is very touchingly ex*
pressed in Dombey and Son . The captain thinks Waiter has
been drowned at sea.

“ He warn’t my flesh and blood,” said the Captain,
looking at the fire—“I an’t got none—but somewhat of
what a father feels when he loses a son, I feel in losing
Wal’r. For why ? ” said the Captain. “ Because it an’t one
loss, but a round dozen. Where’s that there young school¬
boy with the rosy face and curly hair, that used to be as
merry in this here parlour, come round every week, as a
piece of music? Gone down with WaPr. Where’s that

102

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

there fresh lad, that nothing couldn’t tire nor put out, and
that sparkled up and blushed so when we joked him about
Hearts Delight, that he was beautiful to look at? Gone
down with Wal’r. Where’s that there man’s spirit, all
a ore, that wouldn’t see the old man hove down for a
minute, and cared nothing for itself? Gone down with
Wal’r. It an’t one Wal’r. There was a dozen WyJ’r that
1 know’d and loved, all holding round his neck when he
went down, and they’re a-holding round mine now ! ” 1

Look now at this poem by Henry Vaughan, The Search.

Leave, leave, thy gadding thoughts;

Who Pores
and spies

Still out of Doores,
descries

Within them nought.

The skinne, and shell of things *

Though faire, *
are not

Thy wish, nor pray’r,
but got

By meer Despair
of wings.

To rack old Elements,
or Dust
and say

Sure here he must
needs stay,

Is not the way,
nor just.

Search well another world; who studies this
Travels in Clouds, seeks Manna, where none is.

1 Compare also Wordsworth in The Prelude , II, 31, thinking of him¬
self in past days:

Musing on them, often do I seem
Two coiihciousnesses, conscious of myself
And of some other Being.

THE IJ R R E G A R t) E to RIVER OF OUR LIFE 103

The beautiful but irregular rhyme-scheme makes the
thought rather vague and wayward, but “out of doors,” is this
external world, it is “the skinne, and shell of things;” “an¬
other world,” is indoors, one’s real self. Put simply, what
Vaughan means is, “Enquire within. Examine your present
and past experiences.” I remember when I was young, like
many another boy, while travelling by train 1 used to turn one
of the nobs in the compartment when the train started or
stopped, pretending it was I who was the cause of it all. The
true Christian or Buddhist life is just this. When it rains, it is
God’s will, and God’s will is my will, God’s rain is my rain.
Thus it is my rain that rains, it is my own specially ordered
rain that wets me to the skin and chills me to the marrow,
gives me consumption and kills me. It is my sun that shines,
it is my time that silvers my hair by my request, loosens my
teetli at my command. This is the faith, the love, that moves
the sun and the other stars,

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stette,

and the mountains as well:

If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say
unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it
shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

In Zen Koans such as “ Stop that vessel, sailing across the
bay,” the same principle is involved, that of complete self-
abandonment, and self-identification with the “suchness” of
things. If you will all possible things, what is impossible?
Nothing, for

With God ail things are possible.

Rokushi, one of the ten disciples of Bashp..has the following
poem;

104

2EN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

I kept hanging the moon

On the pine-tree and taking it off,

Gazing at it the while.

ft * * C m tt 1i *> *[• L T il ti h 4b «

Issa also expresses this vast thought, which includes all re¬
ligion, all poetry, all the meaning of life, in seventeen syllables:

I take a nap,

Making the mountain water
Pound the rice.

Ill Jk [Z * & m dt T 1r tl

Here we have the identification of man with Nature; Man
— Nature. Issa-in-the-water turns the mill-wheel that pounds
the rice, while Issa-by-the-water slumbers,—yet there is only
one Issa. 1

Thoreau tells us that it is Nature that does the best part
of the work of a carpenter. Nature that does the best part of
the work of an artist, a poet. This is the identification of
Nature with-man; Nature—Man. That is to say, Nature-in-
the-water drives the water-wheel; Nature-in-Issa sleeps, — yet
there is only one Nature. Combining the two, Issa pounds the
rice while asleep; Nature sleeps while pounding the rice.

Now perhaps you can see the Zen in the follow ng familiar
lines, remembering that “Thee” is Autumn, Nature, Man.

Who hath not seen Thee oft amid thy.store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor.

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; *

1 Bertrand Russel, in What I believe , Chapter one, kindly gives us
confirmation of this:

Metaphysicians have advanced innumerable arguments to prove that
the soul must be immortal. There is one simple test by which all these
arguments can be demolished. They all prove equally that the sow nutst
pervade all space .

the unregarded river op our Life .io&

Or on a haif-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

This same condition of mind, though attained by very different
means, is described in Tolstoy's Master and Man . Vassili,
money-lover and self-lover, who has left his servant Nikita to
die in the snow, returns, and lying on him, warms him back to
life, dying himself. The following lines describe his thoughts
as he wakes, for the last time, from his frozen sleep.

Yes, he awoke — but awoke a very different man to
what he had been when he fell asleep. He tried to rise,
and could not. He tried to move*, his hand, and could not.
lie tried to move his leg, and could not. Then he tried to
turn his head, but that also he could not do. Nikita was
lying beneath him, and that Nikita was growing warm
and was coming back to life. It seemed to him that he
was Nikita, and Nikita,he, and that his life was no longer
within himself, but within Nikita. He strained his ears
till he caught the sound of breathing—yes, the faint, deep
breathing'of Nikita. “Nikita is alive!” he cried to him¬
self :n triumph, “and therefore so also am I! ”

The Buddha is the tree in the garden. Issa flows over the
water-wheel. Autumn is sitting on the floor. Vassili, the
master, is Nikita his .servant. I and my Father are one. Do
they not all say the same thing?

CHAPTER y III

EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON THE MINE)

There is an interesting story related in Bacon’s essay Of
Boldness , which is pertinent here. I do not know if it is true
or not, but if true, i t marks Mahomet as a leader of men.

Mahomet made the people believe that he would call
a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for
the observers of his law. The people assembled. Mahomet
called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when
the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said,
‘‘If the hill will not come to’ Mahomet, Mahomet will go
to the hill.”

The “ never a whit abashed” is the important point here. The
mountain stood still and was not abashed. Mahomet went to
the mountain and was not abashed. In Two Gentlemen of
Verona , the outlaw asks Valentine if he is content

To make a virtue of necessity,

4

that is, live the life of Zen, unabashed by poverty,

Wordsworth defines the character of a Happy Warrior.
He is one

Who, doomed to go in company with Pain
And Fear and Bloodshed--miserable train!—

Turns his necessity to glorious gain.

In the ParadisOy (III, 73,- Picearda tells Dante,

“Si disiassimo esser pm superne,

Foran discordi li nostri disiri
Dal voler cli colui che qui ne cerne,

Everything depends on THE MIND 16?

Che vedrai nun capere in questi giri,

S’essere in cariLa e qui nccessc,

E se la sua natura ben rimiri.”

M Were we to desire to be in yet a higher realm,

Such longings were discordant

With the will of Him who allots our places here.

For thou wilt see that for such longing, these spheres

can have no place,

If Love is here Necessity,

And if thou ponderest well its nature."

As she says, in the sublimest words of the Divina Commedia,

(what is yet one more definition of Zen),

#

E’n la sua voluntate c nostra pace.

Issa says the same thing but in his own inimitable way:

O snail,

Climb Mt. Fuji,

But slowly, slowly!

M T i h z z> o) {* n l « Hi

That is, act according to your nature, snail; act according to
God's will, be a snail! Goethe also writes somewhere,

The effort of religion is to adjust us to the inevitable.

When this adjustment is complete, complete, that is to
say, in the will, we have the perfect life of Christ, of Buddha,
of St. 'Francis, of Daruma, of many of the Stoic philosophers.
Epictetus says,

%

Dare to look up to God and say, “ Make use of me for
the future as Thou wilt. 1 am of the same mind; I am
one with Thee. I refuse nothing which seems good to
Thee. Lead me whither Thou will."

108

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

and again,

Two rules we should always have ready,—that there is
nothing good or evil save in the will; and that we are not
to lead events, but to follow them.

Marcus Aurelius says,

The controlling Intelligence understands its own
nature, and what it does, and whereon it works*

Again,

All that is harmony for thee, 0 Universe, is in harmony
with me as well. Nothing that comes at the right time
for thee is too early or too late for me. Everything is fruit
to me that thy seasons bring, O Nature. All things come
out of thee, have their being in thee, and return to thee.

It is of importance to notice here that though the Stoics
above quoted were no doubt noble men, faithful to these prin¬
ciples in life and death, one feels a great difference between
such men, and Joshii, Baso, Isan, Obaku, Rinzai and many
smaller fry. Zen has in it a kind of gusto, a kind of energy,
which shines forth in the smallest thing. Unmon raises his
staff. 1 That is all; but it has the power and force of the
Niagara Falls, carrying all before it. Joshu says, “Wash your
bowls,” 2 and these words have more significance than the
periods of Burke or Demosthenes. That is to say, there is
a residuum of unresolved necessity in the Stoics; not all the
necessity is made into virtue, into freedom. There is some¬
thing cold, lifeless, heavy, something of helplessness ai^d re¬
signation in them.

„ In the Kwannon-kyo (Avalokitesvara Sutra) there is a
passage identical in meaning with the words of Christ, p. 103;

1 $ \"] if irfr k itib & m Ml ft & «:> C* i w J«)

2 m i n j w $ -t ivio

EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON THE MIND 109

Suppose you were on the topmost peak of Mt. Sumeru
and somebody pushed you over; if you prayed in absolute
faith to K wan non, you would remain suspended in mid-air,
like the sun. .

& U M i! o .) % ic A. l) T, K te Iff. L Mi <? 1 i A-
. tC> flic CD m if 0) Jj 4> If (f» H CD ;*H MIL
T 1C ft: U /v (ft IV 1¥ 1*1 ■',!> ffi ill )

Baso says.

Drink up at one gulp all the water in the Western
River and I will tell you (what is the spiritual state of the
man who is independent of all things),

Vi ft - n W'M i i: ;k fill !>>) ik'$, m tit a 0 )

that is, the man of faith. Here let me note one thing. The
teachers of Zen make their doctrine appear very esoteric, but
they should remember that a man who understands the words
of Christ can understand the words of Buddha or Baso or Jo-
shu. If a man understands

i Blessed are the poor in spirit,

if lie understands the music of Bach, he understands

Mu, feo 1

that is to say, to the same extent. But for him to know that
he understands — for this he needs a teacher. Further, they
must remember Kmerson’s words,

Men are better than their theology.

Orthodox Christian theology is really extraordinarily childish,
but not always the Christians who think they believe it, and
certainly not those who understand it in the same profound
esoteric way as with, for example,

} Mu is the state of absolute spiritual poverty.

no

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

The Buddha is toilet paper.
nW'K, i ,f J HU # l ' - HI]

Look once more at the following:

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where
moth and rust doth consume, and where thieves break
through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in
heaven, for where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be
also.

This is not hackneyed, though it has been the text of thou¬
sands of sermons; the words of Christ have something in them
of an elemental quality like air or water, of which we can
never grow tired. The first part of Christ's words is quite
clear, but “lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven ” may be
taken in several ways. It may be taken as an injunction to
accumulate merits in the Buddhist sense; such an interpreta¬
tion seems too materialistic, too calculating. It may be taken
as meaning “live a spiritual life.” This is too nebulous, too
vague, makes hypocrisy (to oneself) difficult to avoid, above
all makes a distinction between eating your dinner and reading
poetry, between the real and the ideal, a distinction which is
the root of all evil. We must remember thal Heaven is here
and now, just asking to be lived in; Hell also. “ For where thy
treasure is, there will thy heart be also.” Finding the heart,
finding the mind, that is, finding the Mind, is no easy task;
Christ tells us to look where our treasure is, it is in the same
place.

It is a cold winter night. The bed is just nicely warmed
through; you are in that (lehghtfu! realm between waking and
sleeping, when the cat begins to mew outside the front door,
asking to be let in. (At this moment, where is your treasure?
It is partly in the warm bed, partly in the cat outside.) After

EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON THE MIND

111

lying there for some time telling yourself that the cat has a
warm fur and doesn't feel the cold, that it isn’t very cold any¬
way, that the cat should stop outside to teach it a lesson to
come hack earlier, that it may be some other cat, that you ar#
jolly well going to sleep, cat or no cat,—you get up and let the
cat in.

It is a cold winter night; the bed is nicely warmed through,
you are nearly asleep when the cat begins to mew outside to
be let in. You bounce out of bed, thinking, “I’d like to wring
that blasted cat’s neck,” and let him in, giving him a little kick
as he enters joyfully with quivering tail. Where was your
treasure? You had no treasure, no warm bed, no mewing
cat; you simply got up and let the cat in. Where was your
heart? It was where your treasure? was. When Baso was
asked, “What is the Buddha?” he replied “1 have no mind, no
Buddha.” 1 JfcjlLo HfltWK 4nMJlik[;K (M "JBU

ffiH-hHfliJ) That is, I have no bed, no cat. The bed is warm,
the cat is a nuisance, but life is running freely in me, un¬
hindered by bed or cat.

As the bee collects nectar and departs without injuring
the tiower, or its colour or its scent, so let a sage dwell in
the village. Dhammapnda

lE o ) & ft 4 4 3 fc 11 V > ii ii 5K 4 0) A t b T is <
ft 0) bi < 4 A c, U f fe

(iJ; 111 » 49.1

There is no friction between the bee and the flower. All things
work together for good, that is, for Good; al ! Gain, no gain
and no lo-s. Stevenson, in a letter to his father, 1879, writes:

l Solange ihr den Willcn haht, den Willcn Gottes zu erfullon und
itgend cin Begehten liabt aucli nach dor Ewigkeit, auch nach Gott—
i-olange seid ihr nicht wirklich arm! Eckehart: Von tier Armut am (U iste,

112

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

The wisdom of this world consists in making oneself
very little, in order to avoid many knocks: in preferring
others, in order that, even when we lose, we shall find
some p 1 ensure in the event, in putting our desires outside of
ourselves , in another ship, so to speak t so that, when the
worst happens , there will he something left .

Our desires belong to the self. All our wants and wishes, likes
and dislikes, judgements of good and bad, belong to the self,
but not to the Self. If we realise that these desires are outside
the Self, in another ship, when the worst happens, that is, when
everything goes against our desires and wants and judgements,
something, the Self, is left. Gissing, in By the Ionian Sea de¬
scribes a case of ibis self-less Self. He is speaking of a festival
day in Catanzaro:

Though crowds wandered through the streets, there
sounded no tumult; voices never rose above an-ordinary
pitch of conversation; the general bearing was dignified,
and tended to gravity. One woman in particular held my
attention, not because of any exceptional beauty, for, in¬
deed, she had a hard, stern face, but owing to her demean¬
our. Unlike most of the peasant folk, she w^as bent on
business; carrying upon her head a heavy pile of some
ornamented fabric — shawls or something of the kind —
she entered shops, and paused at house doors, in the en¬
deavour to find purchasers. I watched her for a long time,
hoping she might make a sale, 'but ever she was unsuc¬
cessful; for all that, she bore herself with a dignity not
easily surpassed. Each offer of her wares was made as if
she conferred a graceful favour, and after each rejection
she withdrew unabashed, outwardly unperturbed, seeming
to take stately leave. Only her persistence showed how
anxious she was to earn money; neither on her features
nor in her voice appeared the least sign of peddling solici¬
tude. 1 shall always remember that tall, hard-visaged
woman, as she passed with firm step and nobly balanced
figure about the streets of Catanzaro. To pity her would

EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON THE MIND 113

have been an insult. The glimpse I caught of her labori¬
ous life revealed to me something worthy of admiration;
never had I seen a harassing form of discouragement so
silently and strongly borne.

This is what Wordsworth calls, in a late sonnet,

The Mind’s internal heaven,

but it must not be mistaken for happiness. The woman was
in heaven, but she was not happy, nor unhappy; Happy, if you
like. Another example, from Dickens’ Hard Times , where
Sissy visits Mr. Harlhouse, one of the villains of the piece.

Her face was innocent and youthful, and its expression
remarkably pleasant. She was not afraid of him, or in
any way disconcerted; she seemed to have her mind en¬
tirely preoccupied with the occasion of her visit, and to

have substituted that consideration for herself.

%

In tl\e following sonnet of Wordsworth composed before 1807,
the subject is ostensibly the sonnet itself but can be taken as
equal to our own individual restricted life. To get this inter¬
pretation firmly into our minds it is better to read first of all
the last verse of hovel ace's To Althea from Prison .

Stone walls do not a prison make
Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage:

If I have freedom in mv love
And in my soul am free,

Angels alone, that soar above,

Enjoy such liberty.

“Freedom in my love” reminds us of Mr. Pecksniff who
took a memorable advantage of this freedom on saying good¬
bye to John Wcstlock, whom he had robbed and cheated.

114 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

“As to yourforgiveness, Mr. Pecksniff,” said the youth,

“ I'll not have it upon such terms. I won't be forgiven.”

“Won't you, John?” retorted Mr. Pecksniff with a
smile. “ You must. You can't help it. Forgiveness is a
high quality; an exalted virtue; far above your control or
influence, John. I will forgive you.”

And now for Wordsworth:

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;-
And hermits are contented with their cells;

And students with their pensive citadels;

Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,

Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,

High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,

Will murmur by the hour in fox-glove bells;

In truth, the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,

In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;

Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)

Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,

Should find brief solace there, as I iiave found.

Here we may note the pantheistic doctrine, denied by
Eckehart, that God is to be found equally anywhere. “ The
prison, unto which we doom ourselves, no prison is,” because
one thing is as good as another. The infinite is not to be seen
in Heaven Put “ in the palm of your hand.” Here once more
we see that the finite is the infinite, the mind is the Mind, the
ordinary man is Buddha. These apparently preposterous, not
to say crazy notions are found to be true in experience. What
experience? Wordsworth tells us, in the experience of nuns,
hermits, students, maids, weavers, bees: last, but not least, in
1 lie experience of Wordsworth himself, who found, in his prac¬
tice of the sonnet, that the infinite meanings of Nature and
Art could be expressed only through the restrictions of the

EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON THE MIND 115

material itself.

In Resolution and Independence we find the solitary line
By our own spirits are we deified,

and we think immediately of the monk who wished to be free,
and the counter-question by the master, Sekito (fijjfl),

“ Who put you under restraint? ”

The answer is given by Blake in the last line of the second
verse of London.

T wander thro’ each charter’d street,

Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,

And mark in every face I meet,

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infant’s cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban,

The mind-forg’d manacles 1 hear.

There is the same thought in The Sisters, where Tennyson
says,

My God, I would not live,

Save that I think this gross, hard-seeming world

Is our misshaping vision of the Powers

Behind the world, that makes our griefs our gains.

This self-betrayal, self-imprisonment of the mind, caused by
its misshaping vision, is expressed in some famous lines from
the I Ird Act of The Borderers:

Action is transitory—a step, a blow,

The motion of a muscle—this way or that—

' ’Tis done, and in the after-vacancy

We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed.

116 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

v *

Wordsworth states the problem, but his wording of it shows
that he does not understand it properly. A better word than
transitory would be instantaneous; there is no gap between
the mind and the action. But afterwards when there is a
separation between the mind and the Mind, there is a sense of
separation, of betrayal,—not only in the after-vacancy but in
the pre-vacancy also. This is what Unmon means when he
says to his monks,

If you walk, just walk. If you sit, just sit; but don’t
wabble, whatever you do.

n m fr 0 ft n ft.o m # n m

But we need not go to China for anything. Our own experience
will tell us what we want to know if only we have the genius
to recognize it. Listen to Dickens in Bleak House. It is a
humorous passage where Mrs. Badger, married for the third
time, is speaking of her second, naval spouse, and quoting him
in reference to Richard Cavslone who, like Beowulf in his
youth, was “slack.”

“It was a maxim of CaptainSwosser’s,” said Mrs. Badger,
“speaking in his figurative naval manner, that when you
make pitch hot, you cannot make it too hot; and that if
you only have to swab a plank you should swab it as if
Davy Jones were after you.”

The problem is how to make this instantaneous state of non¬
separation between mind and Mind, a continuous one. The
state of pre-and after-vacancy is a grievous one. It is Hell, for
Ilell is alienation from God, the Mind. An example of the pre¬
vacancy is the killing of the kitten by Nansen, given in a latei
chapter.

Another beautiful example is that of Kashin and his friend. 1

1 Essays in Zen Buddhism , No I, p. 295.

Everything depends on the mind h?

When his friend picked up a piece of tile, and putting it on
a fiat rock, asked him tct say a word of Zen at that moment,
Kashin only wabbled. The stream of life was dammed up by
a small piece of tile. Just a little piece of tile and he was dead,
poor fellow.

Wordsworth continues:

Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark,

And shares the nature of infinity.

Suffering is living. Life is suffering. Not, there is suffering
in life but life = suffering; this is how suffering shares the
nature of infinity, of infinite life, and like life, is obscure and
dark. It is permanent because the wider and deeper our life,
the more the suffering. Christ himself was

A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

Buddha did not cease to suffer when he arose from under the
Bodhi-tree. Sweet was sweet, and sour was sour, pain was
pain, and pleasure was treasure, just the same. The meddling
intellect mangles experience so badly, as Wordsworth says,
that when we look at the membra disjecta, pain, pleasure, joy,
grief, man, God, good, they seem as if they never have had,
and never will have any connection among them. It is only
when we remember the Mind, that our intellectual puzzles are
solved, or rather, dissolved. You ask, “Is not good, god, and
bad, bad?” The ^nswer is that good is Good and bad is Good ;
cr as Shinran Shonin might have said, “Even the good is
Good, how much more so the bad.” Never forget,

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking
makes it so.

Everything, that is God, that is Good, is both good and bad,

118

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

according as we look at it. Is there no Bad? Shakespeare

again:

There is some soul of goodness in things evil,

Would men observingly distil it out.

Not that things are partly good and partly bad, but that in
moments of insight, of inspiration, of anger, of extreme fear or
pain, we see the absolute value, the No-value, the Goodness of
things evil.

Bad, Pain, Wrong, Evil, do not exist, though bad, q>ain,
wrong, evil certainly do. It is true that as Juliana of Norwich
said,

To me was shown no harder hell than sin.

That is why Daruma sat nine years wall-gazing» why Ivka cut
his own arm off, and died a martyr, why E-no wandered fifteen
years with the hunters. But mere self-reproach and resistance
of temptation is not enough. Chomei, in the Hojoki, says

In the three worlds, everything depends on the mind.

If the mind is not at rest, what are palaces and mansions?
Horses and cattle, the Seven Treasures—of what avail are
they?

i it EL W- (£ /- /: — o 4* b 0 'i> i L % Jr C> ^ (i

-T JES L* t J; U4 < > t 0) 4 L

Us&X)

By “ the three worlds” is meant here not the past, present and
future, but ft I?., the material world, j9>, the world of sensu¬
ous desire, and the formless, immaterial, spiritual

world. Chomei is here quoting from the Kcgonkyd . The whole
passage is:

H ^ m — >C.'o *i> 9V M S«J tto

& H m 80 o

* » * ^

EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON THE MIND 119

The triple world is but one Mind. Outside the Mind
there is no other reality; Mind, Buddha, all Sentient Crea¬
tures,—these three are not different things.

Christ says exactly the same thing but in very Afferent lan¬
guage.

There is nothing from without a man that going into
him can defile him: but those things which proceed out of
the man are those that defile the man.

The Mind cannot be defiled by its actions. God, the Universe,
cannot suffer loss or gain, defilement or purification. If we
realise that the mind is the Mind, all our actions are pure, for

To the pure, all things are pure.

This must be understood, to the Pure, all things are Pure.
Christ does not mean that to a pure-minded man the distinc¬
tion between purity and impurity disappears. Far from it; it
is rather stronger than for ordinary people. This is the answer
to those who suggest that there is something dangerous about
this doctrine. It is dangerous in so far as all truth is danger¬
ous, but to say that vicious people will make such a doctrine
an excuse for viciousness—this may be so, but such people are
like the wolf in /Fsop’s fable of the Wolf and the Lamb, they
will find any excuse for wickedness, and if there is none they
will do it without one. Christ has the following parable con¬
cerning sin, emphasising the need for repentance:

Two men went up to the temple to pray; the one a
Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood
and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am
not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or
even as tbi^ publican. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of
all that I possess.

120 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up
so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his
breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

The word 1 repentance ’ is not in the vocabulary of the 6th
‘Patriarch, who says instead,

Our pure mind is in the depraved one.
i$ ft -So

and, in the last words he uttered, describes the enlightened
man:

Calm and lofty, he works no righteousness;

Noble and dispassionate, he works no evil;

Peacefully, quietly, he hears and sees nought;

Poised and balanced, his mind abides nowhere.

x x * « ft m m T 'm

su as m n iui as m * m #

Stevenson agrees with him in a short fable:

The Penitent.

A man met a lad weeping. “ What do you weep for ? ” he
asked.

“I am weeping for my sins/’ said the lad.

“ You must have little to do,” said the man.

The next day they met again. Once more tlie lad was
weeping. “Why do you weep now?” asked the man.

“I am weeping because I have nothing to eat,” said
the lad.

“ I thought it would come to that,” said the man.

The idea of sin, of defilement, like that of the permanence
of things, rests upon the poorness of our perceptions. We say,
“ My hands are dirty,” but they are not. The dirt is outside
the hands. We might as well lay our hands on the earth itself

EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON THE MIND 121

and say, “My hands are dirty.” Even if the diit is injected
into the blood, it is still separate from the blood itself; the
blood is not dirty. Can you have a dirty atom, a dirty electron?
So it is with the Mind. The Mind cannot be doffed by its ac¬
tions. I cut off someone’s leg. The action itself is neither
good nor bad. I may be a doctor cutting off a leg to save a
life. I may be a soldier "cut ting off an enemy’s leg, to save, as
1 believe, my country. I may be a sadist, causing pain and
suffering for my own pleasure. The action itself is indifferent.
Everything depends on the mind, that is, whether the mind is
the Mind or not. An odd definition of dirt is “Matter in the
wrong place.” In the same way, sin is energy in the wrong
place. When the energy is in the mind, all our actions, good
or bad, are sin. When it is in the Mind, when there is no
separation between mind and Mind, there is no sin. “Energy
in the wrong place”, implies, like “matter in the wrong place,”
that the ordering, organising power is absent. This power is
the Mind. There is nothing from without a man that can defile
him. God cannot defile him. The soldiers who crucified Christ
did not sin. They obeyed their orders. Christ could not for¬
give them. He was obeying his orders. When lie said,

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,

this is what he meant. “They know not what they do.” None
of us know what w r e are doing, none of us can forsee the
multifarious results of our actions. We must simply act as
the soldiers acted and as Christ acted, accepting the results of
the actions as they inevitably arise. This is the thought ex¬
pressed in

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,
for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to
work, for his good pleasure.

122 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

In the three worlds, everything is the Mind.

But be careful, or rather, be good. When a Christian says, *‘1
overcame the temptation with God's help," don't try to deny
it; it’s not necessary to explain that it’s not really some sepa¬
rate being who did it but the Mind. Remember you are only
a couple of clumsy animals making uncouth sounds to rep¬
resent your inexpressible and incommunicable experiences. 1 If
you feel that the experience is the same dr similar, it is not
necessary to force the other person to adopt your terminology.
In so doing you may throw the baby out together with the
bathwater. Further, “we are all members one of another,”
and thwarting his best impulses, “ causing one of these little
ones which believe on me to stumble,” because you dislike his
vocabulary, is simply a cosmic case of cuffing of the nose to
spite the face. The Bible itself does not recognise this verbal
distinction of jiriki and tariki, (fl J J> flllJj) self-power and other
power. It says both in one breath, in the above-quoted :

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for
it is God which worketh in you both to will and to work,
for his good pleasure.

What Zen calls the Mind, distinguishing it from the indi¬
vidual mind, St. Paul calls the “new man” as opposed to the
“old man,” and in his letter to the Coloss ans, he .says

Ye have put off the old man with his doings, and have
put on the new man, which is being renewed unto knowl¬
edge after the image of him that created him,

and, showing the absence of relativity for the “new man,”

»

continues,

1 Weisheit ist nichi mitteilbar,

{Siddhariha , Hermann Hesse)

Everything depends on the min£> 123

Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision
and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, free¬
man; but Christ is all, and in all.

That is, the “ new man ” is Christ, just as the Mind is Buddha.

Chapter ix

THE MIND OF MAN

Both in Buddhism and in Christianity, when the Mind is

reached, this unity is felt most strongly in regard to persons,

to Christ, to Buddha, to Daruma, to the Virgin Mary, to

Kwannon, to one’s teacher. Zarathustra, the founder of

Parsiism, doomed his religion as a world faith, by suppressing

his own personality so much that we cannot realise or idealise

him. The closer we are to the Mind, the closer we are to per
0

sons, (ioethe’s weakness lies here, Shakespeare’s strength.
Wdrdsworth tells us it is not Nature but Man that he primarily
wishes to know,

The mind of Man,

My flaunt, and the main region of my song. {Recluse, 793}

In memorable words Christ declares the same thing:

And he said unto them, “The Sabbath was made for
man, and not man for the Sabbath/’

And not only the Sabbath exists for man but all things, Christ,
God himself, were made for man, not man for them. This
truth is expressed more philosophically though not more strik¬
ingly, by the 6th Patriarch in the 2nd chapter of the Roku-
sodankyo:

Should there be no human beings, there would be no
Dhannas; and hence we know that all Dharmas are made
for men.

THE MIND OF MAN 125

Ti l lit A & < «> 0 KU & *>

ft r. £ii 1 *> A to K i* (i 4^ K r. n '*> T 5Q £ I £ * 0

( A* *11 iflt ft?)

“Dharma” is one of those very convenient words whifh can
mean almost any thing you like. Here we may understand by
Dharmas, Real Things, Reality. “Without man, there is no
Reality,” that is, value. It is evident that man gives value to
things, value which is non existent or at best latent in the
things themselves.

The importance and unimportance of the self cannot be ex¬
aggerated}

The paradox seems to disappear if we write the importance
of the Self and the unimportance of the self, but this is purely
a trick of words, since the self is the Self. Though arrayed or
pot. arrayed in capital letters the paradox remains in all its
glory. Buddha himself, though repudiating the idea of a sepa¬
rate, individual, eternal self, as being the origin of all pain and
suffering, strongly emphasised the importance of self.

By self the evil is done, by self one suffers; by self evil
is left undone, by self one is purified. Purity and impurity
belong to the self; no one can purify another.

1 Conversion {safari fry) exemplifies this contradiction. See The
Psychology of Religion, by E. D. Starbuck, in which a great number of
cases are collected and grouped. The new life consists partly in an ex¬
alted selfhood. “God was my Father and Heaven my home.” “The
truths of the Hible seemed meant for me.” “ I began to reflect on the
Bible and to perform acts of self-denial. All these things were now a
part of me.” This exaltation of self has in it at the same time, a self-
forgeifulness, a sympathetic out going, a process of unsclfing. “ 1 began
to work for others; immediately I was anxious that all should experience
the same.” “1 had a special feeling of reverence toward nature.” The
author concludes from a great number of such examples: —

In conversion, the element that is most fundamental from the stand¬
point of priority is the awakening of self consciousness, while the es¬
sential factor from the standpoint of development is the process of un-
selfing.

123

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

«itfj n b ii n m i « je l # c «(± »u\ *■ n

i SJ £ n \Z 111 6, iift *' U ^ 1 : ft 6 ^

(i* ft *?, 165)

But though this self is so important, it is only by the oblitera¬
tion of self that anything can be known, that anything can be
truly done. As Byron, with his customary sense, remarks in
Don Juan ,

There's naught,,no doubt, so much the spirit calms
As rum and true religion.

We find the connection between rum and poetry (remember,
religion—poetry) in the poets, especially the Chinese poets.
Most of the poems praising it are of poor quality, as are poems
praising Zen, but the rum itself has a releasing power by which
the self is no longer the master: it is the servant of the Self.
It brings about the state described in the Flaming Heart:

Leave nothing of my Self in me;

Let me so read thy life, that I
Unto all life of mine may dy.

George Herbert tries to express this God-drunken state but
fails in the attempt.

Lord, I am Thine, and Thou art mine;

So mine thou art that something more
I may presume Thee mine than Thine,

For Thou didst suffer to restore
Not Thee, but me, and to be mine:

And with advantage mine the more
Since thou in death wast more of Thine,

Yet then as mine didst me restore.

O, be mine still; still make me Thine;

Or rather make no "thine and Mine.

In spite of the belated last line, the 44 mine” and “Thine” are

THE MIND OF MAN

127

reiterated so many times that the religion disappears with the
poetry. Unity cannot be attained nor expressed by such a
means. Zen would prefer

East is East and West is West,

And never the twain shall meet!

Let us take one more example of what the selfless self can
perceive, the first a passage from the Gospel of John, the second
from a Sutra.

There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water from
the well: Jesus saith unto her: “ Give me to drink/* The
Samaritan woman saith unto him therefore, “ How is it
that thou, being a Jew, asketh drink of me which am a
Samaritan woman?** (for Jews have no dealings with
Samaritans) Jesus answered and said unto her, “Every one
that drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whoso¬
ever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never
thirst.”

(Notice the relative water, of thirst and repletion, dirty and
clean ; and the absolute water, to which thirst and repletion
have no meaning.)

Ananda, the favourite disciple of Buddha, having been
sent by the Lord on a mission, passed by a well near a
village, and seeing a girl of the Matanga caste, be asked
her for water to drink. She said, “ () Brahman, do not ask
service of me, lest your holiness be contaminated, for I am
of low caste.*’ Ananda replied, “I, ask not for caste hut
for water.” 1

He asked for water, but gave her in return an eternal truth —
that water is water, water that quenches our thirst, water that
drowns us in lonely mid-ocean, the water of our tears, the

1 Quoted in Cams, The Gospel of Lnddha, from Burnouf, Introduction
a l'histoire du Douddhisme Indien, Paris, 1844; from v>hat Sutra?

123

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

water we receive from our friends, from our enemies,—it is all
water. The charming young lady next door is 6Q°* water. To
see water always simply as water, not as beneficent or malefi¬
cent, not as your water or my water, not as holy water or pro¬
fane water, “ whosoever drinketh of this water that I shall give
him, shall never thirst, but the water that 1 shall give him shall
become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life. ,>
This water is the elixir of life which the Chinese Emperors
and the European alchemists tried to find. It was right under
their noses, like Poe's Purloined Letter. But when you see a
man drinking water it is not so easy, at first sight, to see
whether he is drinking water or Water.

Let us ask once more, “What is the meaning, the object
of Life?” Here is the answer. .Remembering what Spinoza
said, that

Whoso loveth God truly must not expect to be loved
by him in return,

and that Religion—Poetry ■=“Comely Grace,” and Science—
Law •-“Constant Heart,” read the following anonymous poem
of the 17th century. It is from a young woman to a young
man; but suppose that it is an address by Reality to yon , as the
answer to your question, “What is my relation to You, the
Reality of the Universe? ”

Love not me for comely grace,

For my pleasing eye or face,

N >r for any outward part,

N \ nor for my constant heart,—

For those may fail, or turn to ill,

So thou and I shall sever:

Keep therefore a true woman's eye,

And love me still, but know not why—

So hast thou the same reason still
To doat upon me ever.

THE MIND OF MAN

129

In the following short story by T. F. Powys, 1 the Mind, the
mind of Mr. Crunch, is called the Oddity. This story is an
example of “ Jiving by Zen ” OfuiClt < o) the life of perfection.
Mr. Cronch is morally reprehensible, but morality, th6ugh it
may be, as Arnold said, three-fourths of life, is not life itself.
We must not imitate Mr. Cronch; we must not imitate Christ,
or Buddha, except in their imitating no one. All true life is in¬
imitable, unique, astonishing. But as Chesterton is always
pointing out, we are not astonished at the right things.

Lie Thee Down, Oddity 1

Though the sun shone with summer heat, the damp
August warmth, giving the rather faded countryside a
new glow in her cheeks — for there had been a good all-
night’s rain- yet Mr. Cronch wore his black felt hat, of
the cut that used to be worn by evangelical clergymen in
the last century..

The Honourable George Bullman, who employed Mr.
Cronch as head-gardener, had spoken to him some years
before about this hat of his, which was the only thing
about Mr. Cronch that gave a hint of peculiarities. 4 Your
Methodist hat will be the ruin of you one day, Cronch/
Mr. Bullman had observed, while discussing with his
gardener about the making of a new lawn.

Mr. Cronch was mowing the lawn; he had bid the
under-gardener work elsewhere. To please and humour
Cronch, Mr. Bullman used no motor mowing-machine.
Cronch did not like them. But the under-gardener had
hardly looked at the old-fashioned mower before he com¬
plained that such labour was beyond his power. To push
all day such an awkward instrument ‘that might/ the
young man said, 4 have been used by Adam/ was out of
the question- for anyone who understood the arts and
fancies of oil-driven machinery.

Mr. Cronch did the work hitnself. ‘One has, you
know, to pay for one’s oddities/ he told his wife, Jane.

1 Reprinted from The Listener , 19 Sept, 1934.

mo ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

At Green Gate House the grounds were always in the
best order; there was never a weed in the kitchen-garden
or a plantain on the lawn, but at one place, bordering the
lawn, there were railings, and over these railings there
was the heath.

A different world, that looked with contempt upon the
soft pelt of a smooth lawn, which was indeed like the skin
of a tamed beast that did nothing else but lie and bask in
the sun while its sleek hide was being curry-combed by
Mr. Cronch. The heath was a different matter from the
garden. All was nature there, and she is a wild, fierce,
untutored mother. Flowers and weeds, unnoticed, lived
there, fighting the battle of their lives, careless of man,
but living as they were commanded to live at the first
moving* of the waters. The raven and the falcon nested
in the tall trees beyond a desolate swamp, and only a soli¬
tary heath-cutter might sometimes be seen with his load,
taking a long track towards the waste land. Who, indeed,
would view such barrenness when there was the Honour¬
able George Bullman’s garden to admire?

Mr. Bullman could afford a good gardener. The head-
gardener's cottage, where Mr. Cronch and his wife lived,
had every comfort of a modern well-built house. No
servant of Mr. Bullman had anything to complain of. No
one would leave such service, could they avoid doing so.

Over the heath, even the winds blew differently from
the gentle garden ones. Out there the blasts could roar
and bellow, wrench the boughs from the trees, and rush
along madly, but in-the summer-time garden all winds
were soft.

Mr. Cronch stopped. He took tne box from the mower
and tipped the cut grass into the wheelbarrow. The wheel¬
barrow was full of sweet-smelling grass. Mr. Cronch then
whistled softly, and Robert, the under-gardener, left his
weeding and trundled the barrow to the cucumber-frames.
He returned with the empty barrow at a slow, even pace
— the gait of a well-paid gardener, as learned from Mr.
Cronch.

Mr. Cronch began to mow again. He came near to

THE MIND OF MAN

131

the railings beyond which was the heath. The.i he stopped.
He took off his hat and looked into it. He looked at the
lawn. Nowhere in the world, out of England, could any
lawn have been smoother or more green. There was not
the smallest clover leaf there that was not consecrate a to
the fine taste of a proper gentleman and ready to be pressed
by the elegant foot of a real lady. The sm >oth banks, the
beds of flowers nearby, might have been a modern picture
in colours; they were so unlike nature. Tnere was noth¬
ing rude or untidy there, and every cabbage in the kitchen-
garden wore a coronet.

Mr. Crouch had not changed, as the garden was
changed when it became the heath. He was the same Mr.
Crunch who had, at one o'clock, cut the finest cucumber
in the garden for Mr. Bullmau’s lunch. He waited for
another moment or two and then softly put on his hat.
After doing so, he spoke aloud, * Lie' thee down, Oddity ! '
said Mr. Cronch.

Then Mr. Cronch shook his head, as much as to say
that if the Oddity would not lie down, it was no fault of
his. For such a being it was impossible to control. Had
the Oddity lain down, then Mr. Cronch would have gone
on with his work, as a wise man should who earns four
pounds a week, with a good house and garden, and with
leave to sell whatever he likes from his master's.

Hut Mr. Cronch did not start work again. It was no
good; whatever happened to him the Oddity must be
obeyed. The Oddity knew best. Mr. Cronch left the
machine where it was, near to the railings. He walked,
with the same slow gardener's walk — that showed, as
much as any walk could, a hatred of ail untidiness and
disorder—and came to the potting-shed. There he put on
his coat.

The hour was three in the afternoon. Mr. Cronch
learned that from his watch. Then he listened. What he
expected, happened; the church clock that was just across
the way struck three.

Mr. Cronch's watch was always right.

It was no use mentioning that to the Oddity. He

132

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

would not lie down the more because Mr. Cronch’s gold
watch — a gift of Mr. Bullman’s -- went with the Church
time.

Mr. Cronch shut the potting-shed door and went home.
He remarked, when he saw his wife, as though he said
nothing of particular interest that he had given up work
at C.reen Gale House. He told her to begin to pack, for
they were leaving the gardener’s cottage as soon as pos¬
sible.

Jane thought him mad, and when the under-gardener;
Robert, heard of it, he blamed the mowing-machine. ‘To
have to push anything like that would drive any man
away,’ he said to Mr. Bull man.

The Honourable George Bulltnan was anxious that
Mr. Cronch should still remain in the gardener’s cottage.
He would give him a pension, he said, for he did not want
to lose so good a neighbour, whose advice he valued so
highly. Mr. Bullman, of course, blamed the hat for the
trouble.

Jane wished to stay, but as the Oddity would not lie
down, Mr. Cronch said they must go.

About two miles away from Green Gate House, upon
the heath, there was a wretched cottage that had once been
inhabited by a rabbit-catcher. Mr. Cronch chose this hut
as a residence. About an acre of land went with it. Mr.
Cronch repaired the cottage with his own hands, and put
up new railings round the garden. In order to do this
neatly, he spent most of the money he had saved in service.
Then he began to reclaim the garden, that was fallen out
of cultivation and was become heath again.

The wild spirit of the waste land struggled against
him. But here the poverty of the soil met its match.
Nature is no re pecter of persons; she gives alike to the
good and to the evil. The potato-blight will ruin a good
man’s crop as well as a naughty one’s. The heath was
not a curry-combed creature, tamed with milk and wine.
It was a savage animal, now friendly and kind, now cruel
and vindictive, then mild. One day smiling like a pretty
maid, and the next biting at you with ugly-shaped teeth.

THE MIND OE MAN

133

There was no pleasant shelter there, no glass houses,
no high walls, no trimmed box-hedges. The winds of
heaven had free passage, a snake could roam at large and
find only its natural enemies to attack it. The wild birds
had rest. Mr. Crunch bowed his head and laboured. It
needed a better man than nature to cast him down. With
the Oddity asleep, he could go on with his work. There
was no need for him to rest, he was an obedient servant.
He required no telling what to do in the way of work;
even the Honourable (ieorge Bullman had put himself
under Mr. Crouch’s guidance. While he had hands and
tools he could compel the most sour-tempered soil to serve
his needs. His broad shoulders were ever bent over the
ground as he turned the earthen clod.

It was not long before Mr. Crunch compelled the heath
to pay him tribute, and soon a pleasant cottage and a large
well-cultivated garden arose in the wilderness. There
were many who respected Mr. Crunch for lo wing so much
good at Mr. Bullman's to do battle with nature upon the
heath, but others said he only left his master out of pride.
Mr. Crouch smiled when he heard that. ‘ Here wa; a fine
matter, indeed/ he thought, ‘that a mortal man should
have pride - a nice folly to call a leaf proud that is driven
willy-nilly before a November gak\ A fine pride that leaf
must have when, at the Iasi, it is buried in a dung-hill! *

But if Mr. Crunch was proud, as some thought, it was
only because be had the knowledge that, within him, some¬
thing slept. . . .

Mr. Crouch was resting contentedly one Sunday, read¬
ing a country paper. Kven that morn'ng he had been busy
in his garden, and was glad now to rest while Jane pre¬
pared the dinner.

Mr. Crouch sat there, a sinip'e respectable working-
class man -in years too - wearing spectacles, and reading
his paper.

He found something to read that interested him, for
he read the same paiagraph three times.

This was a police case. An old woman, who was em¬
ployed* on Saturdays by the Stonebridge town clerk to

134

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

scrub his floors, had found upon the dining-room floor a
blank cheque. This cheque she had filled in herself, and
because she was a simple woman, without pride, she had
written the town clerk's name instead of her own.

For thirty years Mrs. Tibby had kept herself and her
husband, John—who spent all his time in leaning over the
town bridge to watch the water flow under —and now his
one wish was to go to London to see the king. His wife
wished to give him this treat; ‘ 'E do need a holiday,' she
said.

When a charwoman picks up money she has a right
to it. Mrs. Tibby thought the cheque money. Money,
after a card-party, which there had been at the clerk's, is
often left on the floor for the sweeper - that is the custom
of the country.

Mrs. Tibby was not greedy: she only wrote 4 four
pounds' upon the cheque. She supposed that sum to be
enough to take her husband to see the king. If the clerk
were annoyed, she knew she could work the money out in
scrubbing the floors.

When she was taken up, she could get no bail, so she
went to prison.

Mr. Cronch carefully folded the paper.

The month was November. Over the heath, dark
sweeping clouds, like great besoms, were driving. The
two ravens, who nested in the high fir tree, enjoyed the
wind. The mist from the sea brought memories to their
minds; they remembered stories told of men hanged in
chains on Blacknoll Mound, whose bones could be pecked
clean. The ravens flew off and looked for a iamb to kill.

Mr. Cronch laid the paper, on the table, beside a smok¬
ing dish of fried beef and onions-there were other vege¬
tables to come—and a rice pudding.

Mr. C ronch rose slowly and sniffed.

But the Oddity would not lie down. So Mr. Cronch
told his wife he was going out. The distance to Stone-
bridge was twelve miles. Mr. Cronch put on his overcoat;
he went to a drawer and took out twenty-five pounds, lie
put on his large black hat, opened the cottage door and

THE MIND OF MAN

135

went out - the rain greeted him with a lively shower of
water drops. Jane let him go. She supposed him to be in
one of his mad fits, that the Giant Despair in the Pilgrim’s
Progress used to have.

Mr. Crouch walked along, with his usual slow steady
step -the gait of a careful gardener. When he reached
Stonebridgc he was not admitted into the jail, and so he
took a lodging for the flight.

In the morning he visited Mrs. Tibby. 4 1 wish to be
your bail,’ he said, cheerfully.

Mrs. Tibby was in a maze. She did not know what
she had done wrong. She was happy where she was, she
was allowed to gossip with the prison charwoman, who
was an old friend of h( rs. She begged Mr. Cronch, if he
wished to be good to her, to allow 7 her to stay with her
friend, and to take her husband to London to see the king.
Mrs. Tibby liked the prison, * Everyone is so kind,’ she
said, ‘and when I complained to the doctor about my
headaches, he ordered me gin. I have never been so happy
before.’

Mr. Cronch found Mr. Tibby smoking his pipe and
leaning over the town bridge. He told him he was going
to take him to see the king, and Mr. Tibby agree 1 to go,
but first he knocked his pipe out on the stone coping of
the bridge.

When they reached London, the king was out of town.
He was soon to return, and Mr. Tibby spent the time
happily, smoking his pipe and leaning over Waterloo
Bridge, although the fog w r as so dense he could not see
the river. When the king came, Mr. Cronch took Mr.
Tibby into the crowd to see the king go by. Mr. Tibby
sang * GoJ Save the King/ and shouted Mlurrahl’ The
king bowed.

‘Now i shall die happy,’ said Mr. Tibby, ‘but how
shall 1 get home? ’

Mr. Cronch paid his fare to Stonebridge, and saw him
off at the station.

The weather had improved; a brisk wind from the
south-west had driven off the fog. Mr. Cronch, to please

136

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

himself, walked into the city. He had fifteen pounds in
his pocket, and he looked into the shop-windows. He still
wore his large b ack hat, and the beggars avoided him.
They thought him a Jewish money-lender, or else a Baptist
minister. Beggars are shrewd judges of character. They
have to decide quickly. Their income depends upon it.
To beg from the wrong man means loss of time - perhaps
prison.

Mr. Croneh went down a narrow street where some
offices were. One of these was the office of a money-lender.
A gentleman, who looked worn out by sickness and trouble,
came out of that door. A woman, his wife, who carried a
baby in her arms, waited for him in the street. The gentle¬
man shook his head. Evidently the security that he had
to offer was not good enough.

then there arose a little conversation between them.

*1 could go to mother’s/ the woman said.

‘If 1 had money, I could go with you/ the man ob¬
served, ‘ the change would do me good, and I might get
work in Bristol/

‘ Baby will be easier to manage in a few months/ the
woman said. ‘Mother will not mind taking us, but you
will have to slay here/

‘ I can’t let you go/ said the man.

lie made a curious sound in his throat.

Mr. Croneh stood near on the pavement. Who would
have noticed Mr. Croneh? The couple paid no heed to
him. But presently they turned to where he stood, for
Mr. Crouch spoke.

‘ Lie thee down, Oddity ! ’ he .said, aloud.

The gentleman smiled, he could do nothing else. The
baby held out her arms to Mr. Croneh; she wanted his
hat. Mr. Croneh took two five pound notes from his wallet
and gave them to the woman. Then he walked away.

For his own pleasure, he walked out of the city into
the poor parts of the town. lie walked along slowly and
looked at the vegetables in the greengrocers’ shops. He
wondered that people could buy such old stuff. If he of¬
fered anything like that at the WeyminsTer market, he

THE MIND OF MAN

137

would never find a purchaser. He remembered the lordly
freedom of the wild heath. There, nature might be cruei,
but life and death joined hands in the dance. The sun
could shine, and when darkness came it was the darkness
of God. 'i he town was different.

Mr. Crouch went down a dingy court. Clothes were
hung from house to house, and barefooled children played
in the gutter. The air was heavy with human odours and
factory stench. Then Mr. Crouch came upon something
worse than misery.

A man sat leaning against a wall, with half his face
eaten away. His eyes were .gone/lie cried out to every¬
one whose footstep he heard, to lead him to the river.
When Mr. Crouch came by, he cried out the more. Mr.
Cron cl i stopped.

4 Lie thee down, Oddity! 1 he said, angrily.

4 Lead me to the river/ the man begged.

‘ Come/ said Mr. Crouch, and led the man to the river.
A policeman who knew the man’s wish, followed them.
At the brink of the river, the man said, ‘I am afraid; only
give me one little push, and I shall die/

'Certainly/ said Mr. Cronch, and pushed him into the-
river. The man sank like a stone.

The police officer came up to demand Mr. Crouch’s
name and address; he had made a note of what had hap¬
pened.

‘You will appear at court, charged with murder,* he
said. ‘ But now you may go ! ’

Mr. Crouch walked out of the great city. He had
enough money to take him home by train, but he liked
walking. As he went along he decided to plant a part of
his garden with-spinach, lie had seen a good deal of this
green stuff in the London shops, and he thought he could
sell it at home.

He walked ten miles out of town, and then took a
lodging for the night. Since the Oddity had risen last,
Mr. Cronch had behaved just as a sober gardener would
when out for a holiday. When he came to an allotment,
he would look into it to see what was grown. He found

138

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

the ground good. But lie believed that more glass might
be used, and the city dung, he thought, too heating for
the soil. He was especially interested in the window-
flowers that he saw, but wondered that no hyacinths were
seen, the bulbs having been all planted too late to bloom
at that season.

Starting his walk again the next morning, Mr. Cronch
came upon a large crowd watching a high factory chimney.
This immense chimney, as high as the clouds and weighing
many thousands of tons, was being brought down. The
workmen were busy at its base, and the crowd watched
from a safe distance.

All was ready for the fall; the masons and engineers
left the chimney. But one of the men remained to give
the final stroke that would cause the huge structure to
sway and fall This mason completed his task, and began
to walk to safety.

When he was a few yards off the chimney, he trod
upon a wet plank, hidden in the mud, and fell heavily.
The spectators expected him to jump up and run off. But
he did not do so.

An official held his watch in his hand, ‘ One, two,
three,’ he counted. When he reached sixty seconds the
chimney would fall.

Its direction was known. It would fall directly upon
the man. He tried to rise, but his leg was broken. He
tried to crawl, but the pain prevented him. lie raised him¬
self up, and looked at the huge mass above him; he knew
what was coming. None of the onlookers moved. It was
too late to save the man; to go to him would mean certain
death.

The chimney began to totter, to rock.

Then Mr. Cronch said softly. ‘ Lie thee down, Oddity!’
but the Oddity would not listen to him. Mr. Cronch spoke
in so low a tone that perhaps the Oddity never even heard
what he said.

Mr. Crouch walked, with his slow gardener’s step, to
the man.

* What are you afraid of ? ’ he asked him.

THE. MIND OF MAN

139

4 Of the chimney/ cried the man, 4 it's falling/

4 What if it does fall/ observed Mr. Cronch, looking
up as though he thought the huge mass above him was a
small pear-tree.

‘Its coming/ cried the man.

Mr. Cronch took off his hat. The man smiled.

CHAPTER X

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

This was Hamlet’s answer to Polonius’

“ What do you read, my Lord ? ”

This “words, words, words” has a deeply tragic meaning in
the play. It is, in fact, the secret of Hamlet’s character, the
cause of the tragedy. Hamlet is the Zen-less man, whose
energy, like a mouse in a wheel, goes round and round inside
him and issues, not in action, but in talking. When he docs
act, as in the killing of Polonius, boarding of the pirate ship,
fighting with Laertes in the grave, the final duel and killing
of the king, he acts well, but it is spasmodic, it has no guiding
principle in it, leads to nothing, adds difficulties instead of
solving them as action should. This the king describes:

O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,

Art more engaged.

From this fact comes our deep sympathy with Hamlet. Our
father has not been murdered, no ghosts appear to us, no duty
of revenge is laid upon us, our sweetheart does not go mad
and die of grief, we do not kill our foster-father and rival in
love. But we are all Hamlet in the profound sense that in our
circumscribed and restricted lives, we live, that is, act truly, in
fits and starts, we are dragged willy-nilly across the stage of
life by circumstances. Our true life should be that of the
Mind, or that of God as expressed by the King:

140

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS 141

But 'tis not so above; there is no shuffling,—-there the
action lies in his true nature.

Let me quote Unmon once more:

If you walk, just walk. If you sit, just sit; but what¬
ever you do, don’t wabble.

Compare this to the King’s words, which apply to himself, to
Hamlet, and to all of us:

And, like a man to double business bound,

I stand in pause where I shall first begin,

And both neglect.

In Oriental literature the classical example of the doctrine
of silence is that of Roshi (Laotse):

He who knows, speaks not; he who speaks knows not.
*31#^ n T' &io

Hakukyo-i (Hakurakuten) makes fun of him in the following
short poem:

READING ROSHI

The speaker knows not;

The knower speaks not;

So says Roshi.

If Roshi is a knower,

Why did he write 5,000 words?

M XL -T-

n :# * *n $n 3f BX

lit mi* is » « m
Xi m * # & *n if
m w 3 & /£. -t *

One would have to use another five thousand words to justify

142 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Roshi. A better way would be to attack the enemy with an¬
other paradox: that Shakespeare was one of those who knew
but did not speak. There is a famous passage in the New
Testament which is pertinent here:

Now when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceedingly glad,
for he was of a long time desirous to see him because he
had heard concerning him and he hoped to see some
miracle done by him.

And he questioned him in many words, but he an¬
swered him nothing.

We overeat and hope some miracle will happen. It does not
happen. We are bilious or have stomach-ache, and our health
suffers afterwards. We sin and expect Christ to perform some
miracle. It does not happen. We suffer for our sins, instan¬
taneously as well as in the future. This truth is recognised
even by Dante. When, in the XIVth Canto of the Inferno,
Campaneus defies God to subdue him by the most dreadful
punishments, Virgil retorts,

“O Capaneo, in cio che non s'ammorza
La tua superbia, se’ tu piu punito:

Nullo martirio, fuor che la tua rabbia,

Sarebbe al tuo furor dolor compito.”

" O Capaneus, in that thy pride is yet unquenched,

Art thou the more chastised!

No torment other than thy rage
Would be sufficient pain for this thy fury!

The wages of sin is death. No miracle will intervene, for
* sin' and ‘ death ’ are two names of one thing.

“Can you pluck the heart out of my mystery?”

by asking questions, the meaning of which you yourself do
not understand? Suppose Christ had answered Herod. Sup-

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS 143

pose he had said, “ Blessed are the poor in spirit/' This is
“ all ye know on earth and all ye need to know/' but Herod
could not have understood because he didn't know what the
words meant .

Take the word “dog.” To one, it,means a dirty flea-
incubator, to another, something to kill and eat, to another, a
lovely, living creature, to another hardly anything at all, and
soon, and so on. A “good” dog: in price? fierce? gentle?
honest? pretty? “ My ” dog: as many meanings as there are
“I in the world. So with every word in the dictionary, from
aardvark to zymosis, and so with all the permutations and
combinations of words that make speech. The wonder is that
we understand one another at all. “ Blessed are the poor in
spirit.” “Blessed” and “happy " look similar in meaning, but
they are Heaven and Hell apart. “ The pgor in spirit ”—how
Nietzsche pitied them, that is, his connotation of the words.
Confucius rightly said,

Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible

to know men.

3F £n 9% M fcfl A ill, Om r. k h)

But the attitude of Zen to words is, of course, not quite the
same as this. It does not object to words simply because they
are clumsy tools, but because they are tools; means, not ends.
Or rather, it is because they are used instead of actions, be¬
cause “ actions speak louder than words,” because we are all
of us only too ready to do the Samaritan, without the oil and
twopence. Montaigne reminds us of this in the following:

Zeuxidamus repondit a un qui luy demanda pourquny les
Lacld&noniens ne r6digeaient par £crit les ordonnances de
la prouesse, et ne les donnaient a lire a leurs jeunes gens:
que c'etait parce qu’ils les voulaient accoutumer aux faits,
non pas aux paroles.

144

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

On the other hand, some people speak of .Zen as if it were
synonymous with action. This is misleading. As Hegel said,

Das Denk6n ist auch Gottesdienst.

Zen is not action. Zen is the activity of the mind-body as a
total entity (total here meaning universal). Zen is mind-less
activity, that is, Mind-ful activity, and it may often be ad¬
visable to emphasize the mind, and say, “Take care of the
thoughts and the actions, will take care of themselves.”

An example of this insistence on mind and of the spiritual
dangers of words, both heard and spoken, is given in Dumb¬
ness, a poem of the 17th Century poet Thomas Traherne. The
only speaking he will allow is from the Mind to the mind, and
from things to the mind. Section by section, I give a para¬
phrase, together with quotations from Zen writings, followed
by the original.

DUMBNESS

The object of our lives is to look at, listen to, touch, taste
things. Without them,-these sticks, stones, feathers, shells,
-->there is no Deity.

How joyful to sit by the window alone,

Watching the leaves fall, the flowers bloom in their

season.

im m ffe Ot £ F

M 7# IE ra ft M 11$ M ^ A T A)

The knowledge of these things is Life (not the life of life and
death) and Love (not the opposite of hate).

Sure Man was born io meditate on things,

A nd to contemplate the eternal springs
Oj God and Nature, glory, bliss, and pleasure ;

That life and love might be his eternal treasure ,

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

145

Man is born dumb; this typifies the fact that his real life
is an inner one, not concerned with the outside world:—

Bodhi is within our own mind:

You will seek in vain for a solution of the

mystery in the outside world.

?? ifc w i»] <i> fnj $$ isj 9V & io h)

As he grows older, the speaking intellect will soon contrive
the pairs of contraries by which it apprehends the outside
world; then he will need an understanding of the fundamental
Oneness of things to restore him to his original state of purity.

And therefore speechless made at first, that He

Might in himself profoundly busied be:

And not vent out, before he hath tiien in

Those antidotes that guard his soul jrom sin .

Man is born deaf, that is, not understanding the speech of
others, so that he may follow his instincts and not be confused
by words.

A monk came to Unmon for enlightenment. Unmon
said, “Make your bows/' The monk did so and sal up.
Unmon then gave him a poke with his staff and the monk
retreated a little. Unmon said “ You aren’t blind then,”
and told him to come nearer; the monk did so. Unmon
said, “You aren't deaf then,” and added, “You under¬
stand?^ The monk replied “No.” Unmon said “Aha!
You're not dumb, I see!" The monk realised the mean¬
ing.

0 sna» inmns&o asn

ns.

itt&mo nth xk^: a#

«Hi ns. afM*; fttftjit-fj ?\o

Ad’A)

146

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Wise Nature made him deaf, too, that he might
Not be disturbed, while he doth take delight
In inward things, nor be depraved with tongues
Nor injured by the errors and the wrongs
That mortal words convey . For sin and death
Are most infused by accursed breath.

That flowing from corrupted entrails, bear
Those hidden plagues which souls may justly fear .

(Compare this to Dai-0 Kokushi’s
Wishing to entice the blind,

The Buddha playfully let words escape his golden mouth;
Heaven and earth are ever since filled with entangling

briars.) 1

I was once like this: I existed in perfect Happiness, with
mountains, rivers and skies, houses, men and all creatures,
until I began to speak—and then the^apell was broken!

If the fish moves, the water becomes turbid; if the bird
J\\es t it drops a feather.

. fix It 7k Mo Jk ^ ^ fHo (# m T -t)

This, my dear friends, this was my blessed case;

For nothing spoke to me but the fair face
Of Heaven and Earth, before myself could speak,

I then my Bliss did, when my silence, break?

Before wordsTthat is, other people’s false way of thinking,
false values, had spoiled my spontaneous intuitions, I knew
my mind only, there being no means of communication with
other minds.

1 Quoted in Suzuki’s Manual of Zen Buddhism , p. 175.

* This line is italicised in the original. Compare Basho's
When I speak,

My lips feel cold -

The autumn wind!

< 5 CA* h & L ft© Ift

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

547

If we return to the root, We understand the meaning of life.
Many words, much thinking—the farther from the truth.

# a* ^ it w s ffl m an & m

My non-intelligence of human words
Ten thousand pleasures unto me affords:

For while I kn w not what they to me said,

Bef ore their souls were into mine conveyed,

Before that living vehicle of wind
Could breathe into me their infected mind,

Before my thoughts were leavened with theirs, before
These any mixture was; the Holy Door,

Or gate of souls, was close, and mbte being one
Within itself to me alone was known .

At that time, I lived in the Mind, not in the world of par¬
ticulars. I by myself perceived Truth. My eye was single, one
function alone occupied my mind -that was, to see all things
as spiritual beings, above all, myself as such.

Then did I live within a world of light

Distinct and separate from all men's sight

Where 1 did feel strange thoughts . and such things see

That were, or seemed, only revealed to me.

There I saw all the world enjoyed by one;

There I was in the world myself alone;

No business serious seemed but one; no work
But one teas found; and that did in me lurk .

D'ye ask me w iat ? It was with clearer eye
To see all creatures full of Deities ;

Especially one's self:

(The worms in the wine-butt, beetles and other small
creatures,-each one sends out rays of Infinite Light, each
one is an independent, self-sufficient, all-sufficing peak of
life.}

mumm M m m — * «c * yt m- * be # w m

r48

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Further, every wish based on Reality is gratified, all is
Good, all is to be Enjoyed, all things are at their best; all emo¬
tions in me united in one pure, all-including ecstasy.

This is Wordsworth’s

all that we behold
Is full of blessings. 1

And to admire

The satisfaction of all true desire: •

"Twas to be pleased with all that God hath done ;

"Turns to enjoy even all beneath the sun:

"Twas ivith a steady and immediate sense
To feel and measure all the excellence
Of things;

This “steady and immediate” is the hall-mark of Zen, as it is
of all art, all religion. It is the immediateness of BashcVs

The ti; efly:

As it dropped from a leaf

It suddenly flew away.

“j?l O') m 4* 6 «fc m $ i»

and Davies’

Butterflies will make side-leaps,

As though escaped from Nature’s hand
. Ere perfect quite.

This steadiness, in the centre of movement, is seen in the fol¬
lowing poem of Hakurakuten:

The insects chirp and then are silent;

The candle sinks, and flares up again;

The broad leaves of the basho ouls'de the window
Are the flrst to speak of the rain that begins to fall.

l Quoted l:y Suzuki in -i$g, page 41; I did not notice it until

then.

Words, words, words

i49

■i 1 ft m ft Hk » M X Rjl
Pfi ft ill ft Mi E M * « S

I lived the true, Divine life.

7«ws to inherit endless treasure,

A;z<i /o filled with everlasting pleasure:

To reign in silence , A? sfngr alone,

To see, love, covet , //r/w, enjoy, and praise in one:

To prize and be ravished ; /<? be true,

Sincere and single in a blessed view
Of all His gifts.

While deaf and dumb I was infallible and unassailable; aa
soon as I spoke and heard, I was undone. Before then, my
mind learned from the Mind.

Thus I was pent within
A fort, impregnable to any sin:

Until the avenues being open laid.

Whole legions entered, and the forts betrayed:

Before which time a pulpit in my mind,

A temple and a teacher I did find,

With a large text to comment on.

All existing things were divine, and spoke of Deity.

One speck of dust contains the whole earth; when one
flower opens, the whole world conies into being.

- m m * m - vt; m ft # &

w m m. ta * ft

No car.

But eyes themselves were all the heaters there,

(Compare Basho’s

Over the darkening waves,

The wild clucks’ cries

Are dim and while.)

IS6

2EN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
m < ft T 0 ft (i 0) AM- L 5 L H HI

i4«^ «/m/ ever: star a tongue,

Am/ gale of wind a curious song.

The Heavetis were an oracle, and spake
Divinity: the Earth did undertake
The office of a priest ; and I being dumb
(Nothing besides was dumb) all things did come
With voices and instructions;

But as soon as I began to express myself, to explain, to
compare, illusions arose, things which have no basis in Reality.
The voice of the Mind became inaudible; the passional rubbish
and intellectual subtleties, all the more pernicious because in¬
tangible, destroyed my peace.

But when I

Had gained a tongue; their power began to die .

Mine ears let other noises in, not theirs,

(Compare

All relativity is the result of intellection;

Why grasp so earnestly after hallucinations and

flowers of air?)

- -w r. m » fit!

ft £] m M ® 1C n (fn .6 MS)

A noise disturbing all my songs and prayers .

My foes pulled down the temple to the ground;

They my adoring soul did deeply wound.

And casting that into a swoon, destroyed
The Oracle, and all I there enjoyed:

And having once inspired me with a sense
Of foreign vanities, they march out hence
In troops that cover and despoil my coasts,

Being the invisible, most hurtful hosts .

These ” foreign vanities ” are described by Daito Kokushi as

Words, words, words 151

Reading the Scriptures, reciting prayers, sitting in
contemplation for hours at a stretch, sleeping little, eating
only once a day, observing the religious festivals, spending
all the hours of the day in religious practices.

mmMQi k -awns AiKM-xat

J5uch things have nothing essentially religious in them.

Yet the first instincts and intuitions were so deep as to be
ineffaceable. Above all the tumult 6i this world I still can
hear, when I will, that, still, small voice.

Yet the first words mine infancy did hear.

The things which in my dumbness did appear.
Preventing all the rest, got such a root
Within my heart, and stick so close unto 7.

It may be trampled on, but still will grow
And nutriment to soil itself will oive.

The first Impressions are Immortal all, 1
And let my enemies hoop ; cry, roar, or call.

Yet these will whisper if I will but hear.

And penetrate the heart, if not the ear.

So with regard to the Buddha holding up a flower before the
congregation of monks and Mahakasyapa smiling as he un¬
derstood the meaning,

Buddha was silent, but explained everything;

Kash6 heard nothing, but apprehended all.

l This line is italicised in the original.

CHAPTER XI

FIGURES OF SPEECH

Like Emerson, who, since he was a boy, wished to write a
discourse on Compensation, I have always wished to write one
on the figures of speech, for it seemed to me that on this sub¬
ject life was ahead of rhetoric, and the poets knew more than
the grammarians taught. The text-books tell us that “a figure
of speech is a deviation from the plain and ordinary way of
speaking, for the sake of effect.” This is not so. Byron says,

1 am as a weed

Flung fro;n the rock, on ocean’s foam, to sail

Where’er the surge may sweep, the tempests’ death prevail.

Wordsworth,

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free:

The holy time is quiet as a Nun,

Breathless with adoration.

Tennyson, speaking of a woman staring hopelessly out of a
window,

Fixed like a beacon tower above the waves
Of tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye
Glares ruin, and the wild birds on the light
Dash themselves dead.

The above three similes are not deviations from the ordinary
way of saying things; the things are seen and felt so differently
s > strongly, that the expressions of them necessarily have a
different form, a different figure, of speech. But this figure of

152

FIGURES OF SPEECH

153

speech, is a figure of apprehension, a form of enlightened per¬
ception; it is, that is to say, a soul state in which the barriers
between soul and soul, soul and Soul become lower (simile,
metonymy, synechdoche,) or entirely disappear (metaphor).
Figures of speech are therefore in no sense of the word orna¬
ments of language or embellishments of literature, any more
than child-birth could be termed “a deviation from the (rdi-
nary way of living, for the sake of effect.” A vast number of
figures of speech, it is true, originally living and vigorous, are
now mere fossils of language without power to move them¬
selves or us, but philological passion can imagine them as
once they were,

Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.

Yet others were from the beginning only intellectual conceits,
or imitations, or actual conscious deviations from the ordinary
way of speaking for the sake of variety or to bolster up a
feeble thought. But here we wish to speak not of the figures
of speech which have built up our language and ways of
thought, which are in our blood, so to speak, nor of the flashy
imitations or spiritless counterfeits of poetasters and dilettantes,
but of the discoveries and revelations of the poets in their most
inspired moments. The proverb says, “Great wits jump,” and
figures of speech are jumps, jumps out of appearance into re¬
ality, a return to the unity of things, to the ever-blessed One.
The simile says, “Thatjooks like your long-lost brother! ” the
metaphor says, “It is your brother ! ” All things are Buddha.
I am Buddha. The flower is Buddha. I am the flower. These
statements are not syllogistic, not deducible one from another,
neither are they disconnected. When Heine says,

Du bisl wie cine Blume,

154 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

or Burns,

0 my Luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June:

from the point of view of Zen they are far from speaking ex¬
travagantly or fancifully, — rather they are understating a
matter of fact. It is amusing to see how difficult the text¬
books find it to explain the difference between simile and
metaphor, for, if they are both merely comparisons, what funda¬
mental difference can it make whether the word * like ’ or * as ’
is omitted or not? When we see that the simile, is an approach
towards and the metaphor a consummation of identity, the
difference between the two * and the degree of passion and in¬
tensity becomes understandable. It is the difference between
“I and the Father are one,” and “I and the Father are two.”
Nevertheless it cannot be laid down as a rule that the simile is
always weaker emotionally than the metaphor; as evidence,
the three similes quoted at the beginning of this chapter, and

pity, like a naked new-born babe
Striding the blast.

However, the simile is usually more decorative in its
nature and has less identity in it than the corresponding
metaphors. Compare the simile in King John,

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man,

with the metaphor in Macbeth ,

It is a\ale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

In the latter example, God is the idiot; human beings are the
voice of God, raving and boasting, just meaningless gibble-

FIGURES OF SPEECH

155

gabble. From the intellectual standpoint, nothing less and
nothing more can be said of the meaning of life in this world,
than is expressed in this metaphor. Take another example,
from Shelley:

Like a star of heaven
In the broad day light,

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

The simile of the first part is charming and no more: it takes
us nowhere; but “I hear thy shrill delight’' is much more
profound even than the simile of the previous verse:

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

To hear the actual skylark, that is difficult enough, but to go
beyond even that, and hear “joy,” hear ‘‘delight,’’ to hear, not
one’s own joy reflected from elsewhere, but the joy of the sky¬
lark, the joy of nature, the joy of the 9th Symphony, — to hear
Joy, is indeed a wonderful experience. This is a very different
thing from the

Joy, whose hand is ever on his lips
•Bidding adieu;

Keats is speaking here of the relative joy, opposed to melan¬
choly and says, rightly enough, that the two are inseparable,
they go together. The other Joy of Shelley’s Skylark , appears
in the Ode to AutiAnn and the Ode,on a Grecian Urn t but un¬
named.

Another example from the Skylark is

All the earth and air,

With thy voice is loud,

that is, not only the skylark is singing but the trees and stones
and rivers, the clouds, winds and air, —all is singing, singing

156

zen in English literature

with the voice of the skylark. Jf we explain it “The Skylark is
singing and the voice is echoed everywhere/' we have allowed
the intellect to destroy the poetry and reduce the vision to a
decoration.

The intellect is like armour, it guards us from mistakes,
but it cannot warm us, cannot give us the life it protects. If
once we sink down from the absolute to the relative, from Joy
to joy, from the voice of Nature to the voice of the individual
bird, it is difficult to reattain these lofty regions; we feel like
poor Susan in Wordsworth’s poem:

She looks, and her heart is in heaven : but they fade,

The mist and the river, the hill and the shade:

The sLream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,

And the colours have all pass’d away from her eyes!

•

Another metaphor, or rather, personification, which takes
our heart into heaven, is Herrick’s Daffodils.

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;

As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain’d his noon.

Stay, stay

Until the hasting day
Has run

But to the evensong;

And, having pray'd together we
Will go with you along.

Is to speak of the daffodils praying only a “figure of speech”?
Did not a greater poet than Herrick say, “ Consider the daffodils
how they pray; they toil not, neither do they spin, like Martha,
but only sit at the feel of God, like Mary. Yet even Solomon’s
father David, the greatest man of prayer in the history of the
Jews, for all his eloquence, could not pray as well as one of

FIGURES OF SPEECH

157

these daffodils/* Did he not also say, when his discip'es were
rebuked for allowing the people to shout “ Hosannah/'

“I tell you that if these should hold their peace, the
stones would immediately cry out! ”

If a man can pray with the daffodils he net/l never enter a
church. This is the mood in which the well-off Kikaku saw a
beggar one fine day:

The beggar wears

Heaven and earth

As his summer clothes.

Xi k Ji fife n h £ ft /r & ft

In the example already quoted,

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,

The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration.

If we take this as a formal simile we shall be compelled to ask
the question, “Whom does the evening adore?” But such
is not the point here: the real thought is not a comparison be¬
tween the evening and a nun. Wordsworth felt that that
particular moment was holy. True enough, all moments are
holy, equally holy, but we cannot feel them so. And just as
Shelley heard Joy, so Wordsworth felt Adoration, not his own
adoration of nature or a nun’s adoration of the Godhead, but
simple Adoration as such, to which the adjectives “ calm and
free/' are to be applied. There is passion in Nature, but it is
calm, 'there is religion in Nature (“Natural' piety”) but it is
free. Man is the only religious animal in the sense that he is
the only animal who finds it necessary to assert the fact, who
indulges in the imperfect offices of prayer and praise, the only
animal which needs figures of speech. The white hoi nebulae,

158 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

the blazing suns of the galaxy separated by unthinkable
myriads of miles of empty space-—they are the daffodils of the
sky,

stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay.

Metaphors and similes have the double power —A is like
B, then B is like A. A is B, then B is A.

Am not I
A fly like thee?

sings Blake in a rather simple-simon way, but immediately
afterwards we get the lines

Or art not thou
A man like me?

which changes the whole matter. This is what Issa means
when he says in his poem of the Fly,

See how it wrings

Its hands, its feet!

O, kill it not!

•*£> U V o & M fr T- 'V T h td & 1r o — %
Keats says,

I who still saw the universal sun

Heave his broad shoulder o’er the edge of the world.

Dr. Bain, author of English Rhetoric_and Composition, says of
this:

The similitude of “ heaving the shoulder ” is not fitted
to elevate the subject, nor is it suited to give the pleasure
of fanciful comparison. It is wanting in dignity, as applied
to the sun, and may even suggest ludicrous associations.

FIGURES OF SPEECH

159

This criticism is not to be taken as typical of the attitude of
rhetoriticians but rather as a reduclio ad absurdiim of their
principles. We do not wish to elevate or degrade any subject,
nor to give pleasure by fanciful comparison. To speak of
dignity in regard to the sun or a squib, the Pacific Ocean or
the drip on the end of someone's nose, is equally meaningless.
There is no need to be afraid of associations. Ludicrous asso¬
ciations are rather to be sought for, as showing a thing shorn of
false ornament and in the state of nature. James Legge, trans¬
lator of the Chinese classics, after giving details of Confucius’
life and manners, way of eating, sleeping, and so on, says,

“ Somehow he is less a sage to me after 1 have seen him at

his table, in his undress, in his bed, and in his carriage,”

What would the reverend gentleman say of Johnson with his
dislike of clean linen, and table manners of a hog, of Ryokan
with his lice and I$sa full of fleas? But from the point of view
of Zen the “ broad shoulder ” of the sun is important because
the sun has a broad shoulder and therefore my shoulder is the
sun's. If I lift my shoulder the sun rises; if I lower it, it sinks.
If you only think about this kind of statement it seems crazy
beyond all endurance, but then so does that of Blake when he
declares that to him the sun is not a golden disk the size of a
shilling, but an infinite company of holy angels singing halle¬
lujah. To see the sun as a shoulder, that is not so difficult, but
to see a shoulder as the sun, that needs poetry, inspiration,
religion, Zen.

The mixing of metaphors so severely castigated in the text
books and he’d up to derision by schoolmasters, that feeble
tribe, far from being a vice, is the highest of virtues, if you can
do it properly, for, as its name implies, it is God seen not merely
as a Trinity but as an even higher multiple of real things.

160 ’* ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

In Addison’s well known lines,

I bridle in my struggling muse with pain
That longs to launch into a bolder strain,

what is wrong is not the mixing of metaphors but the separate
metaphors themselves, which are feeble and hackneyed and in
no sense forms of the apprehension of reality, but disguises of
platitudes. In Shelley’s

O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave,

far from feeling any incongruity among “chariotest,” “bed,”
“winged,” “corpse,” the immobility of the flying seeds, the
immateriality of all vehicles, the identity of sleep and death —
all these truths are spontaneously and simultaneously perceived.
Another example, from Part VI of The Ancient Mariner:

'The moonlight steeped in silentness
The steady weathercock.

Moonlight is neither silent nor noisy. To understand the con¬
nection between the moonlight, the silence and the steadiness
of the weather-cock we must first re read a passage from the
Rokusoclangyd. After staying in Shi-e with a party of hunters
for fifteen years, the 6th Patriarch, who had taught them as
befitted their understanding, began to think it was time for
him to go out into the world again, so he left for Hoshoji in
Canton.

In those days Inshil was preaching on the Malia
Parinirvana Sutra (Nehankyo.) At a certain time a flag
was blowing about in the wind. One monk said, “The
wind is moving”; another said, “The flag is moving,” and

FIGURES OF SPEECH

161

the quarrelling was endless. Eno (the 6th patriarch) said,

“ The wind is not moving, the flag is not moving; what is
moving is your minds.” The assembled monks were
thunderstruck at this.

sueai is,

M The moonlight steeped in silentness the steady weather¬
cock.” It was the mind of the Ancient Mariner, the mind of
Coleridge that was steeped in silentness, that was moonlit, that
was steady. “The darkness steeps in turbulence the whirling
weather-cock.” It is our minds that are dark and turbulent
and whirling.

There’s not the smallest orb which, thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiringtothe young-eyed cherubins.

But Shakespeare tells us where this music of the spheres has
its origin:

f'

Such harmony is in immortal souls,

and why the moonlight seems silent and the stars of night
without voice:

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in we cannot hear it.

The Parables of Christ, especially the apparently irrational and
perverse ones, are full of Zen, for the parable with its meta¬
phorical form is a chance to circumvent the intellect and its
pedestrian logic. The parable of Dives and Lazarus is a good
example. This is not to show that rich men will go to Hell
and p.or men will go to Heaven, however much we would like

162

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

lo believe it sometimes. It is to show that the apparent values
of persons and of their actions, has no connection whatever
with their real ones. It teaches the irrationality of the uni¬
verse, as judged by our ordinary relative, intellectual standards.
There is the same irrationality in the parable of the Lost Sheep*
where there is so much joy over the one sinner that repents.
Again in the parable of the Prodigal Son, where vice is re¬
warded, not virtue. (“A fool who persists in his folly will be¬
come wise”: the importance is the persistence, not the good¬
ness or badness; following your instincts to the bitter end, not
behaving like a virtuous machine). Christians find great dif¬
ficulty in explaining away the parable of the Unjust Steward.
(Luke 16.) Christ shows us that the world is a place where
cleverness is as important as goodness. Othello ruined himself
and others because he was a fool: stupidity is not virtue. The
parable of the Importunate Friend, (Luke 11), is likewise in
praise of energy, importunity.

Ask, and it shall be given you, seek, and ye shall find;
knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

'‘Knock,” of course, means run your head against the door
like a battering ram. While you stand wondering what is the
meaning of life, it has no meaning.

The parable of the Great Supper, with the phrase “compel
them to come in,” used to justify persecution of heretics during
the Middle Ages, expresses Christ's intense feeling of the spiri¬
tual determinism of the Universe, a “ stream of tendency ” by
which all men, all sentient creatures, shall become Buddha,
willingly, if they wislvand willy-nilly, if they do not. When,
again, we interpret the parable of the Sower according to Zen,
it gains greatly in depth. The Universe is the great S )wer.
The seeds are sown everywhere, indiscriminately, impartially.

FIGURES OF SPEECH 163

Everything shouts the truth in our ears, brandishes the truth
in our faces, but seeing, we see not, hearing, we hear not.
What is this seed of truth that we will not receive into our
hearts n It is what the Roman Centurion understood so well
as to be praised by Christ above ail the Jews he had ever
known. The universe says “ Come! ” and we come, “ Go! ”
and we go, “ Be angry! ” and we are angry, “ Be sad! ” and
we are sad. While we look for truth or look for pleasure, all
is dark % and mysterious but when we simply obey orders,

Safely through the world we go.

Synechdoche, the naming of a thing by its part is a figure
of speech illustrating the ability of the mind to perceive the
whole in the part, or as Confucius says, “ Seeing one we know
the other three ” ifjjfc — HJJ H .

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him
that bringeth good tidings that publisheth peace.

(Isaiah 52, 7.)

In general, feet are seen as things devoid of poetry, but
suddenly, as the feet of the messenger of peace, they are things
of power and beauty, never again merely the dirty, dusty,
smelly things they were before. Just as the style is the man,
so the feet are the man.

Metonymy, the naming of a thing by some accompaniment,
shows our innate capacity to perceive the weakness and in¬
stability of the divisions the mind invents between one thing
and another.

0 for a beaker full of the warm South.

The blue sea, the hot sun, the brown peasants, the vines, the
grapes, the wine, the ecstacy of feeling—all are one in this

164. ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

line, and this all-one is the essence of poetry, of art, of religion.
It is Zen.

Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead.

The man himself, the grief we feel at his death, these are
separated by the mind, by language, by speech into these two
different things. But in our experience these two are one, and
in the figure of speech, 44 Lycidas, your sorrow,” they are seen
as they really are, two names for a single reality. 44 Is not
dead ” refers only to Lycidas; just for an instant, whHe the
eye moves across the three words 44 Lycidas, your sorrow,” this
unity of Subject, predicate, object, (I sorrow for Lycidas, 1=
sorrow—Lycidas) is perceived in a flash of enlightenment, then
all is dark again,—but with a difference.

The transferred epithet is another interesting example of
the interchangeability of subject and object. The adjective
qualifying the subject is transferred to the object and vice
versa . So, 44 1 lay my head on the weary pillow.” (When this
unity of subject and object is not properly understood, we get
the pathetic fallacy. That is to say, the head and the pillow
are conceived as two entirely separate objects and the weari¬
ness is ascribed to the pillow only. Once we understand that
weariness may be predicated of the head or the pillow equally,
the pathetic fallacy becomes impossible). The opposite case
we get in

Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade,

where the greenness of the object is ascribed to the subject.
Another very beautiful example occurs in one of Hardy's
novels, The Woodlanders, I think. A man with a great love of
trees and special ability in tree-planting, is said to have 44 the
green hand,”

FIGURES OF SPEECH

The little fields made green
By husbandry of many thrifty years.

165

What a history of millions of mankind, dead and living, in
those two words “thrifty years**; and how different from
“years of thrift/* In “thrifty years'* we feel the deep con¬
nection between man and the passing of time, and

“ In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.**

It is like seeing for the first time the picture of Millais* The
Man with the Hoe.

Where the rude axe with heav&d stroke
Was never heard the nymphs to daunt.

of Milton's II Penseroso, does not go so deep, it is more charm¬
ing, but it is a good example of the moment of heaving the
axe when we forget ourselves and the axe and the tree, and
the epithets themselves become interchanged. One more ex¬
ample from Gray's The Bard:

With haggard eyes the Poet stood
(Loose his beard and hoary hair
Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air)

And with a master’s hand and prophet’s fire
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.

Anyone who plays a musical instrument can testify to this
identification. We play, not with our fingers but through our
fingers. ~We play with our characters. The bard plucks the
strings of the lyre. He strikes the lyre, a part of his own body.
He strikes his own breast, arouses and expresses his passions,
his sorrows. So he strikes, not the material lyre, but the sor¬
rows themselves which reverberate in the strings of the lyre.
So we say, “ I play Bach, I play Handel,** not “ the music of

166

ZEN 1*4 ENGLISH „ LITERATURE

Bach and Handel" or “the piano works of Bach and Handel."
The mind, the body, its instruments; the musician, his hands,
the music; the player and what is played,—-

Draw, if thou cans!, the mystic line
Severing rightly his from thine,

Which is human, which divine. -

This chapter is rather scrappy and rambling, but the point
to be grasped is that in some ways language is wiser than the
men who use it; that we often say more than we mean, espe¬
cially the poets; that we speak more truly than we know.
Further, that figures of speech, when passion-inspired, reveal
the identity of what is separated by the logical intellect. And
last, that we should constantly strive, in our reading of litera¬
ture, to recreate with the writer, that mood in which we are
able, if only for a moment, to apprehend things in their unity,
their oneness of nature, their absoluteness.

CHAPTER XII

THE PALE CAST OF THOUGHT

The intellect has suffered a good deal of abuse at the hands
of writers of all kinds. Hamlet, as befits a poet, speaks slight¬
ingly of the pure intellect:

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Fitzgerald has his famous lines:

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door as in I went,

which many no doubt have tested and approved in experience.
Even Bacon says in his essay Of Goodness ,

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to
fall: the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall.

Both Keats and Wordsworth agree that science is the arch¬
enemy of poetry. In Lamia , Keats says,

"There was an awful rainbow once in heaven;

W r e know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.

Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.

Wordsworth, in A Poet's Epitaph ,

Physician art thou?—one, all eyes,

Philosopher!— a fingering s’ave,

168

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

One that would peep and botanize
Upon his mother’s grave ?

and in The Tables Turned,

Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—

We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and Art;

Close up those barren leaves;

Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives,

berates the intellect soundly. Newman in The Dream of
Gcrontius goes so far as to say

It is the very energy of thought
Which keeps thee from thy God;

but no one has equalled Blake in his denunciations of Reason*
His vocabulary is very peculiar and misleading, but if we read
the following passages from Jerusalem , we can understand his
use of “ intellect ” meaning the poetic imagination :

I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel
than the liberty both of body and mind to exercise the
Divine Arts of Imagination.

What is the Divine Spirit? Is the Iloly Ghost any other
than an Intellectual Fountain?

What are all the gifts of the Gospel? Are they not all
mental gifts?

What is the life of Man but Art and Science?

I care not whether a man is Good or Evil, all that I care
Is whether he is a Wise man or a FooJ; Go! put off Holi¬
ness,

And put on Intellect.

For a Tear is an Intellectual thing.

But the Spectre, like a hoar frost and a mildew, rose over

THE PALE CAST OF THOUGHT

169

Albion,

Saying: I am God, O Sons of Men! I am your Rational
Power!

Am I not Bacon and Newton and Locke, who teach Humi¬
lity, to Man,

Who teach Doubt and Experiment ?

He can never be a friend to the Human Race who is the
preacher of Natural Morality or Natural Religion.

I will not Reason and Compare: my business is to Create.

This is the Spectre of Man, the Holy Reasoning Power.

This Reasoning Power is “a murderer of every Divine
Member,” in that it takes the life from every object by ab¬
stracting the Relative qualities in which every object exists,
and makes a dead thing of it.

The Zen expression for intellection is ‘‘grasses” :»?C or
“ briars and wistarias ” life. Blake^s expression is similiar:

Reasonings like vast Serpents

Enfold around my limbs, bruising my minute articulations....
I turn my eyes to the Schools and Universities of Europe,
And there behold the Loom of Locke whose Woof rages dire,
Washed by the Water-wheels of Newton: cruel Works
Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs

tyrannic,

Moving by compulsion each other.

The Reason, or Spectre of man, is the state of the ordinary
man bound hand and foot by the contraries under which we
perceive the world; the Mind, Blake calls Humanity, in the
following, descriptive of the moment when a man becomes free
of life-death, gain-loss, here-there.

Each Man is in his Spectre’s power
Until the arrival of that hour,

When his Humanity awake
And cast his Spectre into the Lake.

176

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

All this begins to make one think there must be something
good about the rational power, if it can stir up such indigna¬
tion. It is hard for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of
Heaven, but it is also hard for a fool. Is it a coincidence that
Christ and Buddha had extremely powerful and subtle intel¬
lects? Christ could quibble with the best of the Jewish Soph¬
ists, when necessary. And when we consider the case of Blake
himself, is it not a fact, that, despite his mysticism and poetry
and painting, his chief defect was, not being a genius or mad,
but that he was a bit of a fool ? To paint pictures which every
one can understand, and write poems which nobody can make
head or tail of without an answer book, argues lack of ordinary
foresight. We do not find people like Inge or Shaw despising
the reasoning faculty, because they have it. The essence of it
is, of course, the power of comparison and the power of self-
criticism. It is the scissors and pruning hook of the mind,
without which no work of art, in its symmetric perfection, can
be produced. Blake himself illustrates this in, for example,
the composition of such a poem as the Tiger, isee the Oxford
Blake , pages 85-88) with all the different, drafts and alterna¬
tives. This is a parable of our own lives, and the relation of
the intellect to Zen. Just tfs

The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ,

so the intellect leads us to Zen..

We are not extortioners, unjust, adulterers, even as other
men. We fast twice a week, give tithes of all we possess. We
read the sacred books, pray to God, repent of our sins. Yet
something annoying happens, some trifling danger arises, and
we find, on thinking it over afterwards, that however qualified
we may be for playing gokleu harps before God Almighty, we
do not know how to deal with importunate beggars, impudent

THE fALfi CAST OF THOUGHT l7l

servants, insolent officials, the haggling vegetable man, bekrg
pushed in and out of tram-cars, all the hundred and one triviali-
ties of life in this world. The intellect it is which compares
our real and ideal actions, which tells us we are not happy
wherhwe suppose we are, which reminds us that our past pain¬
ful experiences are our most valuable possessions, if only we
know how to use them.

A comfort seemed to touch

A heart that had not been disconsolate:

Strength came where weakness was not known to be.

(. Prelude , IV, 153.)

To be ungrateful to your own intellect is just as bad as in¬
gratitude to a benefactor. The only thing is, the intellect
must not be divided from the energy of the personality and
work in vacuo, or as a substitute for the activity of the person
as a whole. But it is the intellect which reminds us of this .
The intellect is sometimes spoken of as raising problems. It
does nothing of the sort. Life raises the problems; disease,
accident, violence without, greed, laziness, cruelty within, give
us our daily, hourly examination. We fail; and it is the
intellect which tells us so, which points to the problems,
sorts and arranges them, ticks off those we have successfully
solved.

After giving the intellect its due we can now define its
limitations. There are three ways in which the intellect over¬
reaches itself.

1. It usurps the function of religion, in supposing it can
understand life. The intellect can understand intellectual
things; life can understand living things. But they cannot un¬
derstand each other, so long as they are apart.- Ikkyu says we
cannot find out how the flowers grow -by cutting open a tree:

172

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Tear open the tree!

- And can you see
The cherry flowers that yearly
Bloom on Yoshino ?

t LfaUife < 3 < 6 YE

m * *) T * A YE * f) *

Emerson has a similar thought in Each and All:

I wiped away the weeds and foam,

1 fetched my sea-born treasures home;

But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,

With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

We see the necessity for that immediacy which Zen insists on,
and which is not the characteristic of the intellect. The in¬
tellect is a collector.

2. It usurps the function of poetry when it replaces the
imagination, the compassion, of the poet. It is particularly
detestable in, for example, Tennyson’s

Faith hears the lark within the songless egg.

One would like to read some lines on a maiden asleep on a
pillow stuffed with the feathers of the lark which would have
come out of the egg only someone ate it. This is not poetry
at all. It is a kind of proleptic vivisection. We get the same
thing in the last two lines of the first verse of The Palm Willow
of Robert Bridges.

See whirling snow sprinkles the starved field,

The birds have stayedj .0 sing;

No covert yet their fairy harbout* yields.

When cometh Spring?

Ah ! in their tiny throats what songs unborn
Are quenched each morn.

THE PALE CAST OF THOUGHT

173

A similar case, in the human world, is Davies*

Sweet Poesy, why thou art dumb!

I fear thy singing days are done;

The poet in my soul is dying

And every charm in life is gone.

When a poet begins to talk like this, he is finished, done
for, dead. Intellection, as in the later Wordsworth, replaces
imagination, and imagination which is the becoming one with
the thing contemplated, has no connection with the mere desire
to write verses.

Two examples from early haiku follow:

A fallen flower

Flew back to its branch!

No, it was a butterfly.

t iinif SB***'*: * n

Their skeletons wrapt
In silk and satin,

They view the cherry blossoms.

KfrOJi** 5 jfL *

Of the first we may say that poetry should deal with facts,
not mistakes or optical illusions; whether the things concerned
are beautiful or not does not affect the question. And of the
second, human beings are only skeletons, it is true, and silk
and satin only rags, but cherry blossoms are only little flat
pieces of coloured pulp.

3. Last, the intellect is guilty of constructing dogmas, systems
of philosophy, which imprison the mind, until it mopes like a
monkey in a cage. In Empedocles on h^na, Arnold speaks of
the two enemies of life, of Zen;

,171

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

„ Some bondage of the flesh or mind,

Some slough of sense, or some fantastic maze
Forged by the imperious lonely thinking power.

“Maze” is the right word for the history of philosophy.
“Fantastic” is justly applied to what le*ives out of account
life itself. “Forged” shows its mechanical nature; “imperi¬
ous,” the dreadful intensity of the destructive analysis.
“ Lonely” is interesting. Emotion may be communicated in a
variety of ways, it is infectious. Thought is peculiarly in¬
dividual, communicable only in words, and establishing bar¬
riers between the fool and the sage where emotions unite.
Nothing divides men so much as thought.

It is true, in a way, to say that Zen may belong to the
warrior, to the priest, to the pimp, to the Christian, to the
atheist, to the fanatic, to the animal, to the saint; yet from
another point of view it is not so, for, though Zen leaves a
man free to believe in any doctrines, to perform any actions,
in its relation to our beliefs it demands that we distinguish
the essential from the unessential. What is the essential?
Zen is the only essential. What is unessential ? All the rest,
especially the emotional and intellectual rubbish that hinders
our freedom. Just as

Perfect love casteth out fear,

so true Zen casts out every kind of bondage, which includes
fear.

Freedom is perfect, pure freedom, but Milton said of
liberty,

For who loves that must first be wise and good.

Freedom means freedom from error and superstition, freedom
to be good. The more freedom the more truth; the more truth

THE PAVE CAST OF THOUGHT 175

the more freedom,—this is a natural law everywhere demon¬
strated in the history of human thought. Thus the construc¬
tion of dogmatic beliefs by the highest intellect reduces man
to the same state of mental slavery as the crudest and most
infantile superstition. The philosopher and the savage are
just as distant from the truth. Nevertheless, as pointed out
above, while there’s intellect, there’s hope. False and un¬
founded notions, impossible romantic illusions may be de¬
stroyed with the help of the very intellect which helped to
create them.

If the intellect then is simply a vacuum-cleaner, there
is nothing to do but rely upon instinct. Emerson accepts
this alternative, saying, in Nature,

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his in¬
stincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round
to him.

Zen also says we are to act self-lessly, thought-lessly, instinc¬
tively, taking no thought, not only for the morrow, but for to¬
day, for the present as well. So be it, but what instinct are
we to follow? Shall we follow them all as they arise in their
wild confusion? And if we distinguish between them, the
resulting action can no longer be called instinctive. The Mind
is not what William James, in criticism of Hegel's Absolute,
called ‘block Reality.’ It is alive, and in the temporal process
of becoming vegetable, animal, conscious, self-conscious, many
instincts have arisen and fixed themselves almost incurably on
jfche human mind. What Zen wishes to do is to take us back
to the most primitive condition of all, to lead us to become,
not only children, but foetuses, amoebae. Santayana is there¬
fore quite correct when he writes (contemptuously) of Mystic¬
ism in the last chapter of the Life of Reason:

176

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Mysticism is the most primitive of feelings and only
visits formed minds in moments of intellectual arrest and
dissolution. It can exist in a child, very likely in an
animal; indeed, to parody a phrase of Hegel's, the only
pure mystics are brutes.

Wordsworth says the same thing, only complimentarily:

Fallings from us, vanishings,

Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,

High instincts before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.

What is this fundamental instinct, this ground of being which
Zen wishes us to-reach? Freud tells us it is sex, and Zen will
not wish to dispute this. Satori is a spiritual orgasm. The
sexual orgasm is a physical reunion, the primitive instinct
arising from the separation of cell from cell, of the animal
from its young. It is temporary, recurrent, causing immediate
relief and absence of desire, leading to self-reliance and self -
realisation.

The spiritual orgasm is a spiritual reunion of Man and
God. It has no reaction, is not under control, coming and go¬
ing like the wind; it leads to .selflessness. It causes a far more
fundamental change of attitude to the outside world. In
Coventry Patmore, the two are combined in a most surprising
and beautiful manner. I give an interpretation of part of the
Sponsa Dei .

Who is this woman whom you are flattering enough to love
so madly, the poor best you can find for union with your soul?

Who is this only happy She,

Whom, by a frantic flight of courtesy,

Born of despair

Of better lodging for his Spirit fair.

He adores as Margaret, Maude, or Cecily ?

THE PALE CAST OF THOUGHT 177

What is this emotion with which all human beings desire the
unspeakable, timeless union of Matter with Spirit?

And what this sigh,

That each one heaves for Earth's last lowlihead

And the Heaven high

Ineffably lock'd in dateless bridal-bed?

Is all this human love mere physical excitement ? Has it v
not some symbolical meaning ? It is written, “Already we are
children of the Deity, but the true meaning of this state is not
yet realised."*

Are all , then , mad, or is it prophecy ?

'Sons now we are of God, { as we have heard,

'But what we shall be hath not yet appear'd /

Never forget, Man is God, and nothing else; God is Man.

O, Heart', remember thee.

That Man is none,

Save One .

This woman you love, is your own Self. You who love, are
God.

What if this Lady be thy Soul, and He
Who claims to enjoy her sacred beauty be,

Not thou, but God;

Your emotion is simply self-love, or rather, Self-love. It
comes from the Self, who loves the self. Eye hath not seen,
nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive of the Joy
(not joy) of that union (of self and Self, man and God)

and thy sick

A female van ; ly.

Such as a Bride, viewing her mirror'd charms.

Feels when she sighs, ‘A// these are for his arms!'

178

ZEN. IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

A reflex heat

Flash'd on thy cheek from His immense desire.

Which waits to crown, beyond thy brain's conceit,

Thy nameless, secret, hopeless longing sweet ,

Not by and by, but now,

Unless deny Him thou !

Another figure under which this instinct is portrayed is that of
death and resurrection, since it involves the renunciation of
everything. So Christ says, emphasising the primitive, ab¬
original nature of this instinct,

Verily 1 say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall
into the ground and die, it abideth alone: bul if it die, it
bringeth forth ipuch fruit.

In Zen this is called Taishi ichiban, the Great Death (Ar?£
— ffif). Notice the “it abideth alone.” Hell, (the ordinary
jjfa ordinary life), is alienation from God, abiding alone.
We cannot dare, then, to follow our instincts unless we have
first entered into that state of death of all the other instincts.
Then we'can follow our Instinct. We can be like flowing
water, like the changing moon.

The water flows, but back into the ocean;

The moon*sinks, but is ever in Heaven.

;K t£ A }/*> H M H Q

CHAPTER' XIII

PARADOX

Usually I hate to speak of what I really feel, to that ex¬
tent Hhat when I find myself cornered, T have a tendency
to say the reverse. (Stevenson, in a lei ter to his father. )

If somebody asks you a question, expecting ‘ Yes’ for
an answer, answer ‘No/ and vice versa. If he asks you
about an ordinary man, answer as if he asked '‘about a
saint, and vice versa . By this use of Relatives, teach him
the Doctrine of the Mean. Answer all his questions in this
fashion and you will not fall into error.

From Eno, the Cth Patriarch's final
instructions to his monks.

as ft a m xk & m ft «f m » m m m ft tt m jl a

% ft po « w ■: at ffl w * mm in -j?g - «&

P«J - tfe lit ft: BP -A ill (A* k kit 1-)

I once said to a lady of great philosophical attainments, “I

remember reading the following problem in some magazine: —
Which of the following pictures most truly represents Peace?

1. A fire side scene, the kettle singing on the hob, a cat

contentedly sitting there.

2. A small bird perched on a slender branch over a roar¬

ing cataract.

3. A skull and some bones in the desert.

Which of them would you choose ? ” (Of course you are sup¬
posed to choose No. 2.)

She answered “A picture of two drunken louts having a
fight.”

179

180

2EN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

One definition of Zen, given me by a man who had done
zazen for eight years, is worth recording. “Zen is a trick of
words/’ How true it is! And poetry too is nothing more and
nothing less. He re are some examples from the New Testament:

He that findeth his life shall lose, it: and he that loseth
his life for my sake shall find it. (Matthew, x 39)

And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your
servant. (Matthew, xx 27)

For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall
have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him
shall be taken away even that which he hath.

(Matthew, xiii 12)

Compare this last to the 44th Case of the Mumonkan:

Basho said to the assembled monks, “ If you have a
stick, I will give you one. If you have not a stick, I
will take it away from you.”

tS M ?n ft Iff # ft ft T* ft M m ft ft T '.ff
M ft ft T ft * fff ft ft To m h m, # m t m)

For Zen the most important thing in these lofty ethical
pronouncements is the paradox itself.- A paradox is not a kind
of pun, to be resolved by explaining the double meaning of the
word. It does not spring from a desire to mystify the hearers
or oneself. It arises from the inability of language to say two
things at once. A-doctor cuts off a leg causing pain arid loss,
which is evil, but saves a life, which is good. If we speak of
the good-bad action, the mind unavoidably interprets this as
partly good and partly bad. In this way music is greater than
language. We can say two things at once, and the two sepa¬
rate melodies become one single indivisible harmony. Pater
says, “All art aspires towards the condition of music/’ Action
does the same, and when it reaches it, .it is the activity of Zen,

Paradox

181

Take for example Bach’s Organ Passacaglia (Joh. Seb.
Bachs Werke fur Orgel, Band VI, Breitkopf and Hartel). On
the pedal is given out the ever-recurring

This is the Absolute, the Voice of God, the Wheel of the Law,
Nature. Then, hesitantly, in syncopation, begins the Relative;
in grief and pain*from the end of bar 16, dying away to bar
24 where the soul reaches its lowest point, the same C as in
the basso ostinato. From there, the resurrection, new life and
hope; but the bass continues the same as ever. 44 There is no
resurrection,” it says, 44 there was no death;” only, 44 1 am that
I am.” 44 Before Abraham was, I am ”: *

44 Nature, with equal mind,

' Sees all her sons at play.”

Yet the Absolute plus the Relative equals something else, which
breaks through all language. Because

Eternity is in love with the productions of time,

the unchanging bass of the pedal and the ever-changing melo¬
dies of the two manuals together express Something which is
hinted at in the 2nd Case of the Hekiganroku:

Once you speak and use words, thereis relativity

or absoluteness.

But I Joshu am not to he found in this region of Absoluteness. 1

m rt w m fto mt; ft m a &

#r.«)

1 Robert Bridges, in Nightingales , expresses his desire tor the absolute:

“ O might 1 wander there,

Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air
Bloom the year long! '*

But Nature, Life, is not in the Absolute:

“ Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,

A throe of the heart.”

This is Wordsworth’s “ Something ever more about to be,’’ and Herbert’
“A quickness which my God hath kissed.”

Paradox

M

Joshu had reached the realm where the paradox of theme aud
variation, absolute and relative* divine and human, law and
freedom, was resolved.

The Paradox must of course be a living, not a manu¬
factured one; it must spring spontaneously out of experience
and the inner life. This is only within the habitual reach of a
spiritual master, but at times it comes to us all. The paradox
is itself an example of what it teaches. The meaning escapes
the words. Very well then, instead of further and further ex¬
planations, floundering farther and farther from Realty, let us
scorn truth, turn our bnck^> on logic, defy consistency,- and
behold, the intangible is grasped, the unsay able is said.

Just as Bach thought in fugues, Hood in puns, so to Donne
paradox was his natural element. The well-known sonnet,
“Batter my heart, three person’d God" ends typically,

Except you enthrall mee, never shall be free,

Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

Especially worthy of praise is the violence of thought in this
last line. Violence of passion is not so uncommon but such
mental hre, such mtelltctual vehemence has few parallels. It
is strong meat indeed. A gentler form is found in The Crosse,
introduced by a Very beautiful simile, expressing the identity
of Buddha and man.

Then are you to yourselfe a Crucifixe,

As perchance, Carvers do not faces make,

But that away, which hid them there, do take;

Let Crosses, soe, take what hid Christ in thee,

And be Ins image, or not his, but bee.

In some poets, for example, Wordsworth, the paradox is
so gentle as to be almost unconscious of itself, as in The PoeTi>
Epitaph, written in 1798.

184

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

He is retired as noontide dew,

Or fountain in a noon-day grove;

' And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love .

Sometimes the truth slides so gently into our minds that we
are hardly aware of it. There seems nothing enigmatic or in¬
tellectually shocking in the last two lines of this verse, but in
them Wordsworth has said something just as remarkable as
Goso in the 36th Case of the Mumonkan:

When you meet a master in the street, do not speak,

do not be silent.

Then how will you greet him?

jl kl a E} m m m a ^ » m » m n. m n & * » 0

(fcTCBU

You must see the invisible, do the impossible, love the unlov¬
able, swim on the dry land and walk on the water. . But fine
words butter no parsnips. The question is, what are we to do
in this continual, continuous dilemma which we call human
life ? The answer is given in one of Stevenson’s fables. The
Gordian knot must b§ cut.

THE SICK MAN AND THE FIREMAN

There was once a sick man in a burning house, to whom
there entered a fireman.

“Do not save me,” said the sick man. “Save those
who are strong.”

“Will you kindly tell me why?” inquired the fireman,
for he was a civil fellow.

“Nothing could possibly be fairer,” said the sick man.
“ The strong should be preferred in all cases, because they
are of more service in the world.”

The fireman pondered a while, for he was a man of

PARADOX

185

some philosophy. “ Granted/' said he at last, as a part of
the roof fell in; “but for the sake of conversation, what
would you lay down as the proper service of the strong? ”
“Nothing can possibly be easier/’ returned the sick
man; “ the proper service of the strong is to help the weak/’
Again the fireman reflected, for there was nothing
hasty about this excellent creature. “ I could forgive you
being sick,” he said at last, as a portion of the wall fell
out, “but I cannot bear your being such a fool.” And
with that he heaved up his fireman’s axe, for he was
eminently just, and clove the sick man to the bed.

Most of our talk about duty, religion, patriotism, Zen, is of this
useless, circular character. In Buddhism, the body is called
“a burning house” We talk and talk while our life

burns away. Johnson, the great example of the vice the Middle
Ages called “Accidie,” says in Rasselas,

While you are making your choice of life, do not neglect
to live.

This is a little weak. Better it would be to think of the words
of Tennyson in The Charge 'of the Light Brigade , words that
express what many think to be an old-fashioned, out of date
sentiment, but which actually cannot be withered by age or
staled by custom:

Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.

Let us consider,

And whosoever would be first among you, shall be
your servant.

How will orthodox Christians explain this in regard to
God? Remember, what Christ says here is a universal law,
that is, it applies to every existing thing in the universe. Who

1S6 2EN IN ENGLISH LdTERA'l UftE

is, after ail, first? God is first. Then he is my servant, will
uncomplainingly, unwearyingly do my bidding, fulfil all my
unspoken wishes, minister to every want, unknown though it
be to myself. And is it not so? How all things support me,
praise me, punish me, work together for my good! Careless
of my appraisal or condemnation, they cherish and reprove
me, admonish and uplift, in ceaseless change they are my
Heaven or Hell according to my own sweet will. The keen¬
ness of the,knife, the softness of the buttef, the cat after the
mouse, the moving shadows on the wall,—all for me, all my
servants.

Sodo (1641-1716) says

In my hut this spring

There is nothing -

There is everything.

?fT fi«J i & Ki M i h il m 3k

If you try to explain this, as praise of poverty and con¬
tempt of worldly riches, the meaning completely disappears.
You must swallow the hut and the nothing and the everything
in one gulp, like Yamei's pheasant,

In one shrill cry

Tiie pheasant has swallowed
The broad field.

ft s » * t- r: - a ^ m r- & % & m

This instantaneous swallowing by the mind of intellectu¬
ally discordant material in a paradox, is the same faculty by
which we appreciate such, passages as

And pity, like a naked new-born babe,

Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

PARADOX

ist

0 1 daffodils

That^come before the swallow dares, and take'

The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath.

Another example is Basho's extraordinary poem on the death
of Issho, a young poet.

Shake, 0 tomb!

My wailing voice

Is the autumn wind.

and one more of Basho, in which the images of Buddha smell
of chrysanthemums and the chrysanthemums become en¬
throned Buddhas, but the experience is of one thing.

AT NARA

The countless images

Of Buddha and the fragrance
Of chrysanthemums!

The perception of the real meaning of a paradox may take
several forms, which we call humour, or poetry, or religion. In
any case, some vivacity of energy is required lest the intellect
should arrive and split hairs. The poetical or religious meaning
can never be explained any more than a joke can be explained.

Let me give some examples, mixed, and see if you can dis¬
tinguish, at a glance, the humour, religion, or poetry in them.

From the nose

Gf the Great Buddha flew out
A swallow.

& wfc hm*'x

188

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

“ All things return to the One. Where does the One return ? ”
“ The dog laps the boiling water in the pot."

n ifc» -S - U « Mo ft ffi M tt*

A butterfly

Asleep, perched upon
The temple bell.

P) m \z .ih *> t m h p m ir % Si

Ijis travelling companions were two strangers, two silent
ladies, middle-aged. The train stopped at Nuneaton. The
two ladies exchanged a glance. One of them sighed and
said, “Poor Eliza! She had reason to remember Nuneaton!”

(Max Beerbohm in The Humour of the Public, from
Yet Again.)

A sudden summer shower;

The ducks run round the house,

Quacking.

9 V b & fc * C *) TW < 'M ft & ft

In all these, at bottom there is a paradox, something in¬
expressible otherwise than in this form. Hazlitt? in bis Essay
on Shakespeare , praises his imagination for just this quality.

It glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.

Its movement is rapid and devious. It unites the most op¬
posite exlremes; or, as Puck says, in boasting of his own
feats, “puts a girdle round about the earth in forty
minutes.” Pie seems always to be hurrying from his sub¬
ject, even when (escribing it; but the stroke, like the
lightning's, is as sure as it is sudden. . . .

He brings together images the most alike, but placed at
the greatest distance from each other; tha' is, found in
circumstances of the greatest dissimilitude. From the re¬
moteness of his combinations, and the celerity with which .
they are effected, they coalesce the more indissolubly to¬
gether. The more the thoughts are strangers to each other.

PARADOX

m

and the longer they have been kept asunder , the more in¬
timate does their union become .

In ordinary people, the soul turns to God only at a time of
great tension or extremity of anguish. Look at Rosetti’s The
Woodspurge:

The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,

Shaken out dead from tree and hill:

I had walked on at the wind’s will,—

I sat now, for the wind was still.

. Between my knees my forehead was, —

My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!

My hair was over in the grass,

My naked ears heard the day pass.

My eyes, wide open, had the run
Of some ten weeds to fix upon;

Among those few, out of the sun.

The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.

From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom or even memory:

One thing then learnt remains ’to me,—

The woodspurge has a cup of three.

This, like Wordsworth’s We are Seven , afterwards to be re¬
ferred to, resembles a Monde in Zen, that is, a question
by a master or pupil concerning the Ultimate Reality, and the
answer. Put into regular form it would run :

Monk : “ You are going to swat a fly; it comes and sits
on the fly-swat itself: what will you do in such a case?”

(That is to say, you have lost everything, you are at a loss, at
an Absolute Loss.)

Master: 44 The wood-spurge has a cup of three/'

190 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Man's extremity is God’s opportunity. 1 If everything is lost,
you have the chance to see even the simplest thing just as it is.
But to see three as three, the flower as a flower — as Alice
Meynell says of the daisy,

Thou little veil for so great a mystery,

When shall I penetrate/ill things and thee?

What will it be to look

From God’s side even of such a simple thing?

Zen, however, will hardly agree with the attitude of the
poetess here. From the point of view of Zen, what is wrong
with us, what was wrong with Rosetti, is not that we don’t
see. truth, not that we can’t know it, but that we don’l know
truth token we are looking at it , when it is staring us in the
fare. Rosetti sees the truth, he sees the woodspurge has a cup
of three, he actually writes it clown in a poem, but does not
recognise the truth, just as in Ifakuin’s Zazenwasan, the drown¬
ing man screams for water, the poor boy does not know he is
the son and heir of a rich man.

*0) z* t < 4' <) l< ft co % CO

-r -1 fc h t ft hi e m & e n c> -t* (& m m w

This is also the meaning of Lady Macbeth’s

Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so
much blood in him ?

The quantity of blood in the old man her husband had
just killed, which she smeared on the faces of the men -
this Fact of the quantity of blood, her whole concentrated soul
1 O’er-wearied,

And seeking a lodging for the night —

Ah, these wistaria flowers!

£ & n *c tr h UV* to

Bashd

PARADOX

191

perceives in a moment of eternity. God is Fact, a Fact is God.
Rosetti’s woodspurge, Allingham's thre # e ducks, Lady Macbetli's
b'ood, the dying Mercutio's barn-door, Hasho’s wistaria, is the
Unknown God, whom we ignorantly worship.

It is noticeable how enlightenment, “satori,” conversion,
illumination, which swallows the red-hot iron ball of paradox,
results in concentration on men and animals and things. At
the end of IMasefield's The Everlasting Mercy, after “the bolted
door had broken in,” all things had each an infinite value.
Not only the brook- and the birds and animals, but

The narrow station-wall's brick ledge,

The wild hop withering in the hedge,

had the same meaning and just as much meaning. Best of
all, because untainted with any ulterior significance:

At the top of the rise.the plough team stopped,

The fore horse bent his head and cropped;

Then the chains chuck, the brasses jingle,

The lean reins gather through the cringle,

The figures move against the sky,

The clay wave breaks as they go by.

Isaiah has a fine poetical paradox in which he denies the
scientific ex nihilo nihil fit .

Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into
singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with
child, for more are the children of the desolate than the
children of the married wife, saith the Lord. 1

Out of suffering, Hamlet; out of old age, Lear; out of death,
Macbeth. Out of unrequited love, physical infirmities, the
1 Compare,

The wooden horse neighs, the stone woman gives birth.

* » k 4: Tg

192 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE ‘

later quartets of Beethoven; out of unattainable ideals, Anna
Karenina. Truly the children of the desolate are many. There
is a Greek proverb somewhat similar,

'1 he half is often greater than the whole.

This is why the piano is better, as an instrument, than the
organ. The organ says everything, the piano leaves much to
our imagination, for, being a percussion instrument, the notes
dwindle and fade away after being struck. Unfinished houses,
unfinished pictures and sculpture tell the'same story. The
whole is the whole, but the half is infinite. For this reason
Lessing said that if'there were held out to him in one hand
truth, and in the other the love of truth, and he might choose
freely between the two, he would prefer the latter to the former.

“ Sie haben wohl recht,” sagte Goethe. “ Lessing solhselbst
einmal geaiissert haben, dass, wenn Gott ihm die Wahrheit
geben wolle, er sich dieses Geschenk verbitten, vielmehr
die Mu he vorziehen wurde sie selber zu suchen.” (Ecker-
mann, Gesprache mit Goethe, 1827)

Zen is the love, of truth, a very different thing from the
liking of or the preference for truth. Truth, the whole truth
is there, no doubt, but our life is love of truth. How can we
get into this state of love, this life? The greatest paradox in
the history of the world tells us:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall
into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it
bringetli forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall
lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world, shall keep
it unto life eternal.

If we try to explain this, and talk of physical life and spiritual
life, the real meaning totally disappears. If you wish to live,

PARADOX

193

die! Without thinking, abandon yourself, all.your wants and
wishes, not only for happiness, but for truth, for life, for good¬
ness, for God. Then you have eternal life, the peace that
passes understanding.

Paradoxes are the bright banners of the liberty of the
mind. They proclaim that the mind is free to bestow or with¬
hold values. It gives its categories to objects and decides their
relations. Reason cannot deal with individual things, for the
individual cannot be defined. It gives us rational, scientific
knowledge of the forms of things, abstractions from the thing
itself, types, rules, concepts. Reason grips life with a strang'e-
hold, but life says, “To win, is to lose,” and as in Judo, uses
the flower of the enemy to escape from it.

So to express the freedom of the mind we have such say¬
ings as,

The moon is shining in the garden,

Put there is no shadow beneath the pine tree;

Outside there is not a breath of wind,

But the bamboos are rustling.

m lit) ft n M ft) ; /f- M M Ys ft So

There both is, and is not, a connection between the moon and
the shadow. Absolutely, spiritually, poetically, there is no
connection, because it is the mind, it is “thinking which makes
it so” or not so. Rationally, intellectually, scientifically, there
is a connection between moon and shadow because there is an
objective cau.se and effect observable in Nature. Thus also, to
divide is to reduce, but “Good, the more communicated, more
abundant grows."

There is a danger here of trying to explain the dilemma
by saying that the material world is governed by law and the
spiritual world is free. Such is not the case. In the spiritual-
material world there both is and is not, and the resolution of

194

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

this contradiction is life itself, and nothing but life can resolve
it. This is the spiritual, parabolic meaning of miracles; it is
perhaps at the bottom of our enjoyment of conjuring and ac¬
robatics. Again,^ there is a danger that the paradox may be
taken as overstepping the mark, as exaggeration for the sake
of effect, in answer to the overweening claims of the reason.
Such is not the case. To repeat, there both is a shadow and
is nbt a shadow beneath the pine tree. The paradox merely
states one of these matters of fact, reason the other. The
latter we can see any night; the former only when we are at a
white-heat of vision. Yet even when we are at our lowest ebb,
there is something in a paradox which calls to our real selves,
and for a moment, before custom, heavy almost as life, doses
the prison door upon us, we see

the children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

But the strange thing is that not only poetry and religion
but reason also has its paradoxes. Parmenides, a mathema¬
tician, showed that according to reason, nothing can come into
existence or go out of existence j Zeno of Elea showed that
things cannot move, a moving arrow is an illusion, Achilles
can never overtake the tortoise. But here again life solves the
problems by living. We come into existence and go out of it,
things move, things overtake other things. And life solves
the greatest contradiction of all, the unchanging universe of
Spinoza,

There was something undefined yet perfect, existing
before Heaven and Earth, soundless, formless, independent*
changeless, all-pervading, unfailing. Roshi, 25.

U ft K U M *>0 ® ft iTu S

ftl 'ii itij .(4£ ^ T 3i)

PARADOX

195

and the changing universe of Heracleitus,

The moving water flows ceaselessly, yet the water is
never the same. (Opening sentence of the tlojoki l )

h < m o) m a m a p l t, m t * <?> & c * p

{ )S < fill)

So we have, not, “ Though it changes, it is the same,” which is
intellectually understandable, but, “ The more it changes, the
more it is the same.” This touch of life, of genius, of inspira¬
tion, of Zen, of something beyond logic and rationality, gives
us a strange feeling of freedom and power.

Creen comes from indigo, but it is more beautiful than

indigo;

Ice comes from water, but it is colder than water.

W *&»*#»* (Utfttt)

Truth is expressible only in the form of a paradox. What is
not paradoxical, is not true; is not living, inexpressible truth.
Denial is the only way to assert, blasphemy the only praise.

1 Literally *10 feet square history/ a short, book written by Kamo
Chomei, at the beginning of the 13th century. The first half describes
natural calamities, the second his life in retirement in a 10 leet square
hut. Together with Basho’s Oku no Hosomichi , the best things in Japa¬
nese literature outside Ilaiku.

CHAPTER XIV

DON QUIXOTE

To include Don Quixote in English Literature is a piece of
impudence, though a lesser one than the inclusion in it of a
religious anthology of the Jews, collected by them during a
period of a thousand years, called the Bible. But though Don
Quixote has taken his place with Hamlet, Joseph, Robinson
Crusoe, Gulliver, Mr. Pecksniff, and Alice, his true character is
not yet recognised either in his own country or that of his
adoption. Of the work of Cervantes more than that of any
other, are Goethe's words true, that a poet has to be taught his
own meaning. The genius is hardly aware of the significance
of his performance, since so much of it is the God that speaks
through him as a mouthpiece. In the case of D ,n Quixote this
is further complicated by4he fact that Cervantes, in the Second
Part of Don Quixote , destroys, unconsciously, his own creation
in the First Part.

Not only Don Quixote but Sancho Panza also, is utterly
different in.the two parts. This is to some extent due to the
fact that the Second Part was written (as an after-thought ?)
nine years after the first. For the same reason, the Second
Part of Faust is also very different from the First, but the two
cases are otherwise not the same, for the important thing in
Faust is the poetry, whereas in Don Quixote the importance
lies entirely in the character of Don Quixote, the man himself
and his ideals; and the change of character means that the
two Parts are two entirely different books and are about two

196 r

don Quixote

1?7

entirely different people of the same name. Mr. Pickwick is a
very different person at the end of the book from what he is at
the beginning. This also is due to the lapse of lime, to the
serial form. But he changes from a merely comic character
to a mellow, kindly,'and somewhat heroic character of a pecu¬
liarly British kind. In Don Quixote, we have the opposite, the
sudden degeneration, the sudden putrefaction before our eyes
of a personality. 1 The explanation of this apparent disinte¬
gration, this metamorphosis of a butterfly into a grub is that
Cervantes did not himself understand clearly what he had done
in the First Part, what kind of being he had created. Cervantes'
conscious and unconscious intentions in writing the First Part
were opposed. Cervantes tells us ad nauseam that the Ro¬
mances of Chivalry were the cause of Quixote’s madness. He
seems to have approved of the burning of them by the curate
and the barber, not’ on the ground that they made pfeop’e go on
crazy adventures, but because they were poor as literature, at
once unrealistic and inartistic. At the end of Part II, Quixote
recovers from his madness and declares,

44 Ya soy enemigo de Amadis de Gaula y de toda la infinita
caterva de su linaje; ya me son odiosas todas las historias
profanas de la andante caballeria; ya conozco mi necedad
y el peligro en que me pusieron haberlas leido; ya, por
misericordia deDios, escarmentando en cabeza propia, las
abomino.” 2 (Parte segunda, cap. 74.)

(I am now enemy of Amadis of Gaul and all his tribe: all
the profane histories of Knight errantry are hateful to me.

I now realise the danger and peril into which I fell by read¬
ing them.. By the 4nercy of God, I learned by my own ex¬
perience, and abhor them.)

1 Compare Wordsworth, before and after 1800.

2 Quotations from Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha, Edicion y
nolas de b rancisto Rodriguez Marin, Madrid, Ediciones de “Ca Leclura” 1913*

2EN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Wn the other hand, as I shall show later in quotations, the Don
Quixote of the First Part is the quintessence of all the chivalry
of the Romances, all the knighthood of the Middle Ages, to¬
gether with spiritual and noble qualities derived from Cervantes
himself. His madness is partly his idealism (of which we sane
people have so little) partly an overstrung imagination at the
service of this same idealism. 1 The Don Quixote of Part II is
a kind of travelling lecturer, whose senility is taken advantage
of in the most odious way by a couple of impudent, sophisti¬
cated creatures, the Duke and Duchess (cuyo titulo aun no.se
sabe). He analyses himself and his illusions:

t Quien duda, senor don Diego de Miranda, que vucsa
rnerced no me tenga por un hombre disparatado y loco?

Y no seria mucho que aai fuese, porque mis obras no
pueden dar testimonio de otra cosa. Pues, con todo esto,
quiero que vuesa rnerced advicrta que no soy tan loco ni
tan menguado como debo de haberle parecido.

(Parte segurfda, cap. 17.)

(“ Doubtless, Senor de Diego de Miranda, you look on me
as a crazy, mad fellow. And it may well seem so, for my
conduct testifies to this alone. Yet, for all that, let me tell
you that I am not so crazy and half-witted as you take me
for.”)

and discourses on the probabilities of the veracity of the
romances of chivalry;

Hay mucho que decir—respondio don Quixote- en razon de
si son fingidas, 6 no, las historias de los andantes Caballeros.

(Parte segunda, cap. 16.)

1 Wordsworth was very fond of Don Quixote. In a letter of 1806 he
speaks of the “ Nourishment that is contained in fairy tales, romances.”
Thinking of Don Quixote, Wordsworth says, { Prelude , V, 15.1)

In the blind and awful lair
Of such a madness, reason did lie couched.

don ouiXote i9§

(“ There is a lot to be said,” replied don Quixote, “both for
and against the truth of the romances of Knight Errantry.”)

The Don Quixote of the First Part is Zen incarnate, of the
Second, a sententious buffoon. Sancho Panza also suffers a
complete change. In the First Part he is the ordinary man,
self-seeking, fond of money, fond of his belly, stupid, a coward,
yet not altogether devoid of some natural Zen and faith in his
master which lifts him, like Babbit, above the entirely material.
In the Second Part he becomes a just, benevolent, disinterested,
clever judge and faithful servant, and at times the foolish
knave of the First Part, but disbelieving his master's visions
and helping to make a fool of him. The Second Part is better
written, it is true; more cultivated, more urbane. It is a book.
The First Part is not a book, it is life itself with its medley of
gentleness and brutality, humour and pain, nobility and vul¬
garity, all united by the vision of Don Quixote himself, into a
meaningful whole. The words of Byron in Don Juan, though
devoid of poetical merit, need to be pondered over once more.

I should be very willing to redress

Men's wrongs, and rather ch€ck than punish crimes,
Had not Cervantes, in that too true tale
Of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail.

Of all tales 'tis the saddest—and more sad,

Because it makes us smile: his hero's right,

And still pursues the rightto curb the bad
His only object, and 'gainst odds to fight
makes him mad!
n a sorry sight;—
loral taught
By that real epic unto all who have thought.

Redressing injury, revenging wrong,

To aid the damsel and destroy the caitiff;

Opposing singly the united strong,

His^guerdon: 'tis his virtue
"But his adventures forr
A sorrier still is the great n

200

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

From fqjeign yoke to free the helpless native:—

Alas! must noblest views, like an old song,

Be for mere fancy’s sport a theme creative,

A jest, a riddle, Fame through thick and thin sought!

And Socrates himself but Wisdom’s Quixote?

Ceryantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away;

A single laugh demolish’d the right arm
Of his own countryseldom since that day

Has Spain had heroes. While Romance could charm,
The world gave ground before that bright array;

. And therefore have his volumes done such harm,

That all their glory, as a composition,

Was dearly purchased by his land’s perdition.

“All such efforts fail.” It does not need Cervantes to tell
us that, and anyway, what does it matter? “Of all tales ’tis
the saddest.” The only sad tales are those of men who re¬
nounce their ideals as Don Quixote does at the end of the Second
Part. “His Virtue makes him mad.” There is a profound
truth in this. It was their virtue that made Christ, St Francis,
Blake, Daruma, all mad, mad as hatters, compared to sane
people like you ope. Which is a sorrier sight, his life or
ours? Again, what is “tfie great moral taught,” which is such
a sorry thing? “Noblest views” are not “mere fancy’s sport: ”
here Byron’s sense of humour is defective, laughing at Quixote
is one thing, laughing with him is another. “Cervantes smiled
Spain’s chivalry away.” Cervantes could not do such a thing.
You might as well try to smile the pyramids away, smile death
away. Byron could not laugh religion away in Cain and the
Vision of Judgement. The chivalry which is made, fun of in
Don Quixote was already dead. The chivalry which Don Quixote

A

embodied is as eternal as the faithfulness of Oishi-Yoshio, the
leader of the 47 Ronin. As to the later decadence of Spain, if
it be ascribed to loss of Romance, that is to loss of idealism, to

DON QUIXOTE

201

the loss of power to love the better more than the good, this
means the loss of power to distinguish the essential from the
unessential in Don Quixote and this cannot be perversely
blamed upon Dun Quixote itself, except in so far as Cervantes
defaces his original in the Second Part and confuses the issues.

- What was wrong with Spain, what is wrong with,every
nation, every individual, is the lack of the true spirit of Don
Quixote. Professor Suzuki, in his Zen Buddhism and its In¬
fluence on Japanese Culture, gives an example of Zen in a bulb
fighter. No doubt it is correct in its way, though the bull
would afford an equally good example, at the same level of
intelligence and morality. But the man who in the history of
the world exemplifies all that is best in Zen, the man who sur¬
passes Hakuin, Rinzai, Eno, Daruma and Shakamuni himself
is Don Quixote de la Mancha, Knight Errant. What is Knight
Errantry ?

El andante caballcro busque los rincones del niundo;
entrese en los mas intricados laberintos; ncometa a cad a
paso lo imposible; resist a en los p&ramos despoblados los
ardientes rayos del sol en la mitad del verano, y en el in-
vierno la dura inclemencia de los vientos y de iosyelos;
no le asombren leones, ni le espanten vestiglos, ni ateiiio-
ricen endriagos; que buscar £stos, acometer aqueilos y
vencerlos a todos son sus principales y verdaderos ejerci-
cios. (Parte segunda, cap. XVII.)

(The Knight-errant searches all the corners of the world,
enters the most complicated labyrinths, accomplishes at
every step the impossible, endures the fierce rays of the
sun in uninhabited deserts, the inclemency of wind and ice
in winter: lions cannot daunt him nor demons affright
nor dragons, for to seek, assault, and overcome such is the
whole business of his life, and irue office.)

But all this is not mere self-development, born of a desire tq

m 2EN IN ENGLISH LltERATtfRfi

be an Arhat. The object of a Knight Errant, what he lives
for, is

para defender las doncellas, amparar las viudas y socorrer a
los hu6rfanos y a los menesterosos. (Parte primera, cap. XI)

(to defend maidens, protect widows, assist orphans and re¬
lieve the distressed.)

In this he is not to judge men, not to think of their goodness
or badness, but only of their misfortunes:

Solo le toca ayudarles como a menesterosos, poniendo los
• ojos en sus penas, y np en sus bellaquerias

(Parte primera, cap. XXX)

(It is for him to succour them as being needy, looking on
their distresses, not on their crimes.)

and this applies to all men and women equally; old and young,
rich and poor, good and bad, •

porque de la caballeria andante se puede decir lo mesmo
que del amor se dice: que todas las cosas iguala.

(Parte primera, cap. XI)

(for it may be said of Knight-errantry what is said of love:
that it makes all things equal.) 1

His attitude to other people is that of the sane man to mad¬
men. To him food, money, clothes, are nothing. Don Quixote
himself quotes from an old romance:

Mis arreos son las armas,

Mi descanso el pelear;

1 Compare Crabbe, in Lady Barbara; or the Ghost:

Death’s equalising arm
Levels not surer than Love’s stronger caarm,

That bids all inequalities begone,

That laughs at rank, that mocks comparison.
Knight-errantry, death, love,—these have something in common, Zen.

DON QUIXOTE

20S

Mi cama las duras penas,

Mi dormir siempre velar.

(Parte primera, cap. II.)

My wants, arms alone,

My rest is war;

My bed the hard woes,

My sleep an eternal vigil.

This reminds one of a passage at the beginning of Sotoba
Komachi, iWaley’s translation):

A thousand leagues

Is little road

To the pilgrim’s feet.

The fields his bed,

The hills his home.

Till the travel’s close.

r- m a? Vr < *£>» & to »e* l ui c ft &

J%<T)Z H x M o> #5 ta h Z Hr ft 60

All things that the world counts evils are his good. As
Shakespeare says,

All places that the eye of heaven visits,

Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.

So Don Quixote quoting with approval the old Spanish proverb

Donde una puerta se ci'erra, otra se abre,

(Parte primera, cap. XXI)

(Where one door shuts, another opens,)

reminds us of the Kmersonian doctrine of Compensation. Even
pleasant things and happy times may contain something good
and profitable for the soul., This attitude to life, of willing
acceptance of all that comes, (or rather, all that we come to,

204 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

for our attitude to life must be active and not passive,) is ex¬
pressed as follows, when Don Quixote first sallies forth iasearch
of adventure, taking no thought for the morrow ^

Y prosiguio su camino, sin llevar otro que aquel que su
caballo queria, creyendo que en aquello consistia la fuerza
de las aventuras. (Primera Parte, cap. II.)

(He rode on his way, going where it pleased his horse to
carry him, for he believed that in this consisted the very
soi^l of adventures.)

The same attitude of mind is shown in Chapter 50 of the First
Part: we see before us

un gran lago de pez hirviendo a borbollones, y que andan
nadando y cruzando por el muchas serpientes, culebras y
lagartos, y otros muchos generos de animales feroces y
espantables, y que del medio del lago sale un voz tristislma
que dice: “Tii, caballero, quienquiera que seas, que el
temeroso lago estas mirando, si quieres alcanzar el bien
que debajo destas negras aguas se encubre, muestra el
valor de tu fuerte pecho y arrojate en mi tad de su negro y
encendido licor; porque si asi no lo haces, no seras digno
de ver las altas maravillas que en si encierran y conlienen
los sietes castillos de las siete fadas que debajo desta
negrura yacen.” Y que apenas el caballero no ha acabado
de oir la voz temerosa, quando, sin entrar mas en cuentas
consigo, sin ponerse a considerar el peligro a que se pone,
y aun sin despojarse de fa pesadumbre de sus fuertes
arrnas, encomendandose & Dios y a su sehora, se arroja en
mitad del builente lago, y cuando no se cata ni sabe ddnde
ha de parar, se halla entre unos floridos campos, con quien
los Eliseos no tienen que ver en ninguna cosa.

(a vast lak*e of boiling pitch, in which a great number of
snakes, serpents, crocodiles and many other ferocious and
fearful creatures are wallowing about: a voice.wails from
the middle of the lake, “ Whosoever thou art, O Knight,
who surveyest this horrible mere, if thou wishest to obtain

DON QUIXOTE

205

the blessing that lies Beneath these gloomy waters, show
the might of thy valorous breast, and throw thyself into
these black, burning waves; doe^t thou not so, thou art not
worthy to see the great wonders of the seven castles and
their seven fairies, that lie beneath these lugubrous surges.”
No sooner have these awful words .ceased than without a
moment’s consideration, without a thought of the danger
he runs, without even taking off his massive arms, com*
mending himself to God and tohis mistress, he dashes into
the middle of the boiling lake. And just when he does not
know what will happen to him, he finds himself among
flowery fields beautiful beyond those of Eliseum.)

This reminds one of the 5th case of the Mumonkan, the man
hanging by his teeth over a precipice. 1 About the meaning of
life or such foolish questions, whose answer disappears at the
moment we ask them, lie never troubled his head, nor as to
the profit, the gain, from this kind of journey through life. It
is chiefly a broken head and the loss of an ear,

No se gana otra cosa que sacar rota la cabeza, 6 ttna oreja
menos (Parte primera, cap. X.)

all of which he is to bear without complaint, like the samurai
who picks his teeth though he has not broken his fast.

No es dado a los Caballeros andantes quejarse de herida
alguna, aunque se les salgan las tripas por ell a.

(Parte primera, cap. VIII.)

(A knight-errant must never complain of a wound, even
though his entrails are dropping out of it.)

\

Everything depends on the mind. It is the mind which de¬
cides whether a thing is a basin or a helmet. The mind is a
conjurer, a magician, a wizard which can change one thing
into another.
l See page 3l7.

206

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Y asi, eso que £ ti te parece bacia de barbero me parece £
ipi el yelmo de Mambrino, y a otro le parecerd otra cosa.

(Parte primera, cap. XXV)

(So it is that what looks to you like a barber’s basin, I see
clearly to be Mambrino’s helmet, and another man may
take it for something’else.)

The mind can change day to night, grief to joy, hell to heaven.

Hdgalo Dios — respondio don Quixote — como yo deseo y
tu, Sancho, has menester, y ruin sea quien por ruin se tiene.

(Parte primera, cap. XXI)

(“Let God grant it thus,” answered Don Quixote, “as I de¬
sire and you have need, and may he be a wretch who
thinks himself one.”)

This freedom of the mind, freedom of the will, consists in
following one’s instincts, disdaining all causes and effects, all
rationalizing, to act like life itself which lives the life of life.

Ahi esta el punto - respondio don Quixote—, y 6sa es la
fineza de mi negocio: que volverse loco un caballero an¬
dante con causa, ni grado ni gracias: el toque esta en de-
satinar sin ocasidn. (Parte primera, cap. XXV)

•(“ This is the point,” replied Don Quixote, “ this is the es¬
sence of my manner of life; for a knight errant to run
mad for some actual reason or other — there would be
nothing praiseworthy or meritorious in that! The per¬
fection of it consists in running mad without the least con¬
straint or necessity.”)

But for all this talking and boasting there is nothing of
egotism in Don Quixote. He is in a state of Muga (tot 3%), a
state in which he himself is nothing, he seeks nothing for him¬
self, his personality is always dissolved in the valour and glory
of the action itself. So when Sancho says

DON QUIXOTE 20?

Estos son m£s de veinte, y nosotros no mas de dos, y aUn
quiza no somos sino uno y medio—Yo valgo por ciento —
replied don Quixote, (Parte primera, cap. XV)

(“These are more than twenty, and we only two, or rather
one and a half.” “ I am worth a hundred,” replied Don
Quixote,)

and we feel that this is an understatement. Don Quixote un¬
derestimates himself; he is worth more than a hundred in any
combat. But all this spiritual strength does not derive from
Don Quixote himself but from his ideal as embodied in Dulcinea,
and so he tells the doubting Sancho Panza with great fury:

Y l no sabdis vos, gaii£n, faquin, belitre, que si no fuese
por el valor que ella infunde en mi brazo, que no le tendria
yo para matar una pulga? Decid, socarron de lengua
viperina, y l quien pensais que ha ganado este reino y
eortado la cabeza A este gigante, y hechoos a vos marquds
(que todo esto doy ya por hecho y por cosa pasada en cosa
juzgada) si no es el valor de Dulcinea, tomando a mi brazo
por instrumento de sus hazahas? Ella pelea en mi y vence
in mi, y yo vivo y respira en ella, y tengo vida y ser.

(Parte primera, cap. XXX)

(“Do you not know, you vulgar rascal, you rogue, that
were it not for the valour that she infuses into my arm, I
would not have the strenglh to kill a flea? Tell me, viper-
tongued villain, who has regained the kingdom, beheaded
the giant, and made you marquis (for all this is to me as
done and finished) but the power of Dulcinea which uses
my arm as instrument of her deeds? She fights in me,
she is victorious in me, and I live and breathe in her, re¬
ceive life and being itself from her.”)

Yet Cervantes does not commit the error of making Don
Quixote superhuman. He is a man of like passions with our¬
selves, who feels the pangs of hunger and the smaller pains of
the body. Like Christ, he is often peevish, unreasonable, ex*

208

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

pccting too much of human nature, and himself finds often that
discretion is the better part of valour. Yet for all this he can
say of himself, as Christ also could have said, a wilful wrong

de voluntad y a sabiendas jamas lc di a nadie.

(Parte primera, cap. XLVII.)

(voluntarily and knowingly I never committed to anyone.)

Among many others, there is one especial point of resem¬
blance between Don Quixote and Blake. Just as in his visions
Blake saw and talked with many of the ancient worthies, so
Don Quixote describes the face, figure and character of the
persons of the Romances:

Ese es otro error—respondid don Quixote—en que han
caido muchos, que no creen que haya habido tales Cabal¬
leros en el mundo; la cual verdad es tan cierta, que estoy
por decir que con mis propios ojos vi A Amadis de Gaula,
que era un hombre alto de cuerpo, bianco de rostro, bien
puesto la barba, aunque negra, de vista entre blanda y
rigurosa, corto de razones, tardo en airarse y presto en de*
poner la ira. (Parte segunda, cap. I)

(“This is another mistake,” replied Don Quixote, “into
which many have fallen, not believing that such knights-
errant ever existed in this world. The truth is as certain
that I may say I have seen Amadis of Gaul with those my
own eyes. He was of great stature, fair of face, a well-
clipped beard, though black, his face at once fierce and
gentle, of few words, slow to anger and easily pacified.”)

A small but interesting example of Sancho's Zen, quite acci¬
dental and natural, of course, but none the less the real thing,
is given in the 2nd Part of Don Quixote , Chapter XXVIII, after
Sancho has been soundly beaten (in the previous chapter,) by
the townsmen of Reloxa. The pain is so great that he turns
on his master and for a whole page pours out a torrent of

DON QUIXOTE

209

vituperation on his own folly for following him, with no profit
and every kind of loss imaginable. Don Quixote then says (re¬
member this is the Don Quixote of the Second Part who is here
simply Cervantes himself speaking,*)

Haria yo una buena apuesta con vos, Sancho — dijo don
Quixote—: que ahora que vdis hablando sin que nadie os
vaya & la mano, que no os duele nada en todo vuestro
cuerpo.

(‘Til wager,” said Don Quixote, “that at this moment
while you are .going on like this at pleasure, that you
don’t feel a bit of pain anywhere.”)

We feel pain when we think of it; while we forget it, from
danger, anger , 1 or any other reason, we feel no pain whatever.
So Blake says,

The tigers of wrajth are wiser than the horses of instruction.

It was the power of Zen that enabled Latimer to “ receive the
flame as it were embracing it, After he had stroked his face
with his hands, and (as it were) bathed them a little in the fire,
he soon died (as it appeared) with very little pain or none.” It
was the power of Zen that enabled Drake to finish his game of
bowls and then defeat the Armada.

The humour of Don Quixote , its pathos,—in what does it
consist ? Lockhart says:

He is the type of a more universal madness — he is the
symbol of Imagination continually struggling and con¬
trasted with Reality — he represents the eternal warfare
between Enthusiasm and Necessity — the eternal discre¬
pancy between the aspirations and the occupations of Man
— the omnipotence and the vanity of human dreams.

i Contrast indignation. Nietzsche says, in Jenseits von Gut und Bose ,
Und niemand lugt soviel als der Entrtistete.

210 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

With such a view of life, a kind of spiritual Zoroastrianism, we
can understand nothing at all. We cannot ^understand the
spider catching the fly, the shining of the sun, the fall of snow,
—not even the simplest things aretiomprehensible by this kind
of dualism, let alone such a lofty creation as Don Quixote.
Once we divide the world into ideal and real, imagination and
reality, everything becomes a meaningless struggle, there is
no central unity to be seen, it is simply a vast tragedy of Nature
making a fool of Man. The humour of Don Quixote is the
contrast between Reality and Unreality, between the ideals
(that is to say the vision of Truth, the apprehension of Eternal
values,) and the inadequate methods Don Quixote takes to put
them into practice. It is a contrast between Wisdom and Folly,
between Perfection of motive and Imperfection of means, be¬
tween good aims and bad judgement. Notice that these op¬
posites are not dualistic in character, though they sound so.
Reality and Unreality, Wisdom and Folly, are names for the
same one thing. We use them to explain the humouf of Don
Quixote, as lying in the contrast between Pure Truth and Im¬
pure Application, but actually these two are one. Defect of
application means defect of vision. When a man sees the
Truth of things, all his actions are perfect. Perfection means,
not perfect actions in a perfect world, but appropriate actions
in an imperfect one. Don Quixote’s are inappropriate, but
not, as in our case, as a result of defect of will, but of defect
of judgement. He lacks the Confucian virtue of Prudence, the
balance of the powers of the mind.

The pathos of Don Quixote derives from the same source
as the humour, but with the addition that we ourselves, as we
read the book, have an underlying sense of shame that our
lives are directed to the acquisition of all the things Don
Quixote so rightly despised. No man can read Don Quixote

DON QUIXOTE

211

without a feeling of self-contempt. To forget this, many laugh
at hinvthat they may not weep at themselves. r

The life of Don Quixote was a life of Zen; indifferent to
the opinions of his fellows, without a single thought of self, of
self-aggrandisement or self-expression, he lived twenty four
hours every day, following his instincts (his ideals,) as whole¬
heartedly, as truly, as naturally, as the blooming of flowers in
spring, as the falling of leaves in autumn.'

CHAPTER XV

PANTHEISM, MYSTICISM, ZEN

PART I

Professor Suzuki appears to look upon Zen as a form of
Mysticism, but is very down on Pantheism. In my opinion,
Zen is neither. Before we enter the jungle of definitions, let us
note that Homer , 1 Chaucer, Shakespeare, are full of Zen, but
no one yet has called them mystics or pantheists. What about
Wordsworth, you may say? For the moment I will simply
ask you, is there arty pantheism, is there any mysticism, in
Michael, The Daffodils, the Ode to Dut', the Lucy poems, The
Solitary Reaper, The Cuckoo, Ruth ?

Now for the definitions, from which you will not, I am
afraid, get much pleasure or profit.

Mysticism is an attitude of mind founded on an intui¬
tive or experienced conviction of unity, of oneness in all
things.

The Ideal is the only Real.

The methods of mental knowledge and spiritual knowl¬
edge are entirely different. C. E. Spurgeon

The consciousness that everything we experience, every
fact, is an element and only an element in 4 the fact,’ i.e.
that its being what it is, it is significant or symbolic of
more. R. L. Nettleship

Mysticism is a belief in spiritual apprehension of truth be¬
yond the understanding. E. Underhill

1 When Arnold says of him, “ Homer is rapid in his movement,
Homer is plain in his words, Homer is simple In his ideas, Homer is noble
in his manner,” he is praising him for his Zen.

212

PANTHEISM, MYSTICISM, ZEN

. 213

The Jews were not pantheists themselves because they
never speculated on the relation in which omnipotence
stood to natural forces and human acts.

Holiness for the mystic cohsists in universal mildness and
insight, in freedom from all passion, bias and illusion; in
a disembodied wisdom which accepts the world, dominates
its labyrinths, and is able to guide others through it with¬
out pursuing for its own part any hope or desire.

G. Santayana

To the Pantheist, God is wholly immanent, all is God. To
Mysticism, God is all. Prof. Oman

Pantheism, even when psychic, ignores ideals.

Santayana

Panpsychism, the theory that nature is alive and even
participant in soul-life throughout, though in very different
degrees. Inge

To distinguish mysticism from pantheism is no easy mat¬
ter. So, for example, a great number of the poems of the Ox¬
ford Book of English Mystical Verse are simple pantheism. The
compilers do not give a definition but only say they include
such “ poems as contain intimations of a consciousness wider
and deeper than the normal," which means rather less than
nothing at all. In general it may belaid that pantheism sup¬
poses a more concrete and less sophisticated conception* of the
universe. It is more or less a matter of belief and opinion, and
so we may call Emerson with his notorious Brahma a pantheist;

I am the doubter and the doubt,

And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

Mystics, which are roughly of two kinds, religious and
nature mystics, have the distinguishing feature of passion. In
the religious mystics, God, though immanent, is also trans¬
cendent, as in the following of Richard Crashaw:

214 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Thy God was making hast into thy roofe,

Thy humble faith, and feare, keepes him aloofe:

Hee’l be thy guest, because he may not be,

Heel come—into thy house? No, into thee.

and this from Cowper’s Task:

But all are under one. One spirit—His

Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding brows—

Rules universal nature.

Cowper says “ universal nature ” but he actually means

What he views of beautiful or grand
In nature.

This kind of thing only,

Prompts with remembrance of a present God!

The division here of God and nature is very disagreeable. Not
to be able to look at the broad oak or “the green blade that
twinkles in the sun ” without being “ prompted ” to think of
something else, must cause a perpetual splitting of the mind.
This is what Christ warns us against, in “Judge not” and “Let
not thy right hand know .what thy leffchand doeth.”

The nature mystics, on the other hand, are forgetful of
God, either leave him out altogether or put him in perfunctorily,
or use the word God as a synonym for Nature or Reality. As
pointed out above, passion distinguishes their attitude from
pantheism, though there is often an insensible flowing from
one to the other. The finest example of nature mysticism is
found in Wordsworth, The Excursion, (I, 199.)

He beheld the sun

Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked—
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth

PANTHEISM, MYSTICISM, ZEN

SlS

And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay

Beneath him:-—Far and wide the clouds were touched,

And in their silent faces could he read

Unutterable love. Sound needed none

Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank

'\ he spectacle: sensation, soul and form

All melted in him; they swallowed up

His animal being; in them did he live.

And by them did he live; they were his life.

Wordsworth then inserts two lines that might well have been
omitted from the poem, since they represent an intellectual
after-thought:

In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God,

but continues, showing that there was actually no “ visiting ”
of one person, by Another:

Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired.

No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request;

Kapt in the still communion that transcends

The imperfect offices of prayer and praise.

One more extract, from Tintern Abbey:

A sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And th^ round ocean and the living air
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man—

A motion and a spirit, that impels \

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.

These two passages represent the high water mark of
nature mysticism in English Literature, They are full of Zen*

2U> ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

They portray a condition of ‘satori,’ of illumination. But the
next point is of cardinal importance; these lines of the Daffodils,

They stretch’d in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance .

Tossing their heads in spirightly dance,

are also full of Zen but are not mystical, still less pantheistic.

The first example, from the Excursion, shows us the mind
of Man in its union with the universe. The second, from
Tintcrn Abbey, shows us the universe as perceived by the man
in union with it. The third, Daffodils, shows us something
very different, apparently, from either. We see, not the mind
of man, nor the universe, but the daffodils, and when we see
them as Wordsworth also saw them, as they really are, that is
sufficient. Mysticism is like Zen, in this respect, that you can¬
not believe or disbelieve in mysticism. You are either a mystic
or-nothing. But the great gulf fixed between mysticism and
Zen is this. Mysticism uses the object, the finite, as a telescope
to look into the infinite . Zen looks at the telescope.

We say, very loosely, “There is Zen in this,” “This is far
from Zen,” but we must notice there is a great difference, both
in art and life, between Zen and talking about Zen. Compare
with the extract from the Excursion, the following poem of
Basho on a similar subject:

A wild sea,

The Milky Way stretching across
To the isle of Sado.

<fc 3 e m

Another of Bash6, to compare With the Daffodils . (Note that
though both poems speak of the author’s feelings, both are

PANTHEISM, MYSTICISM, ZEN 217

c i.ually objective, since they do so to express the nature of the ,
flower itself.)

How they pull the heart-strings—

Coming along the mountain road—

These violets!

Ill K 4$ T & \Z £> (9) 11 :#l n m

The most famous of all haiku, of which I give an uncon¬
ventional translation, has this same quality, that is, of ex¬
pressing an unsvmbolical, unallegorical fact, which is never¬
theless a Fact, and The Fact.

The old pond.

A frog jumps in —

Plop!

* Ml V ife M O' z Ink o )%f & m

Against this translation it may be urged that “plop" is an un¬
poet ical, rather humorous word. To this I would answer,

“ Read it over slowly, about a dozen times, and this association
will disappear largely." Further, it may be said, the expres¬
sion “ plop" is utterly different in sound from “ mizu no oto "
This is not quite correct. The English “sound of the water"
is too gentle, suggesting a running stream or brook. The
Japanese word “ oto " has an onomatopoeic value much nearer
to “ plop." Other translations are wide of the mark. “ Sp’ash"
sounds as if BashS himself had fallen in. Yone Noguchi's
" List the water sound," shows Baslio in a graceful pose with
finger in air. "Plash," by Henderson, is also a misuse of
words. Anyway, it is lucky for Baslio that he was born a Japa¬
nese, because probably not even he could have said it in Eng¬
lish. Now we come to the meaning. An English author writes
as follows:

2IB ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Some scholars maintain that this haiku about the frog is a
perfect philosophical comment on the littleness of human
life in comparison with the infinite. Such poems are hints,
suggestions, rather than full expressions of an idea.

No haiku is a philosophical comment. Human life is not little:
it is not to be compared with the infinite, whatever that is.
Haiku are not hints; they suggest nothing whatever.

One of the great merits of this poem is that it lends itself
to almost any interpretation that may be put upon it. But in
general these may be reduced to four:

1. It is an ordinary poem of no special merit. This mod¬
ern view allows it historic importance, and marks for its ob¬
jectivity.

2. It is an expression of silence and serenity, accentuated
in prospect and retrospect, by the sound of the water made by
the frog. This, l think we may say, is the impression made on
the average reader, who has some appreciation of Bashos
way of life.

3. It is a symbolic and mystical poem. The sound of the
water is the Voice of God, “ old ” means timeless, the pond is
infinity, the plunging of the frog into the water is the baptism
of the soul in death, the death of the self. (To be quite honest,
I must say that I have just invented this interpretation myself.)
Almost all Japanese would recoil from this instinctively. When
I translated what I have just written, to my wife, she said, “It
reminds me somehow of the Olympic Games/' and this is the
reaction of a healthy, lively mind to such a false and forced
explanation. God, eternity, infinity, death, the soul,— such
conceptions are possible though hardly attractive subjects for
haiku , but as stated above, haiku are not hints, they do not
suggest such notions to us.

PANTHEISM, MYSTICISM, ZEN 219

4. Suzuki 1 relates the story of this haiku being an answer
to the question “ What is reality?”, but this seems as apoch-
ryphai as that of Kikaku’s suggesting (The yellow

rose' as the first part of the poem and Basho's rejection of it
for ih Suzuki further says, “ The source of life has been

grasped,” and this is no doubt true, and it is equally true of all
poetry, all art, all music, though the grasping has different
degrees of strength and persistence. The danger of this view
is that it makes this poem jjiifl < £ t< \ makes it stink of Zen.

Before I explain the poem, let me say four things:

(a) A poor haiku of Basho is better than the best of Ki-
kaku, Buson, or Issa. In this respect, English and Japanese
poetry differ very much. When we read an English poem it is
pleasant and profitable to know the author, but not essential.
But it is necessary to know, for example, that Basho is the
writer of a certain haiku, for several reasons. First and most
obviously, haiku are very short. Second, if we know that
Basho wrote the haiku, we summon up the whole of our poetic
energies as we read it. Third, our knowledge of Bashd’s choice
of poverty; his profound realisation of the impermanence of
all things; his tender love of human beings; his view of poetry
as insight into reality, not mere art or literature; his desire for
the naked, unadorned truth, — this knowledge enables us to
look with 13 ash (Vs eyes at what he saw,—the moon, the flowers,
the faces of his disciples; to listen with his ears to what he
heard,- the voices of the cicada, the dripping of the rain, the
silence of the sky. 2 Last, however deep we delve into the

1 In Zen Buddhism and its Influence on Japanese Culture , page 147.

2 Compare Wordsworth, of his sister:

She gave me eyes, she gave me ears,

And humble cares and delicate fears,

And love and thought and joy.

220

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

meaning, however high we may soar with it, we feel safe , with
the same feeling that we have towards things, towards nature
itself. We trust in the unaffected sincerity of Basho.

(b) Partly due to the influence of Masaoka Shiki, the
modern view of haiku has swung away from Bashd towards
the typical English attitude, as expressed in The Friend of
Man , an essay on walking-sticks, by A. A. Milne.

Our stick must be propped in the sand while from a
suitable distance we throw stones at it. However beauti¬
ful the sea, its beauty can only be appreciated properly in
this fashion. Scenery must not be taken at a gulp; we
must absorb it unconsciously. With the mind gently ex¬
ercised as to whether we scored a two on the band or a
one just below it, and with the muscles of the arm at
stretch, we are ideally receptive of beauty.

That is to say, it avoids all so-called religious notions and
reasonings, all didacticism and moralising; it registers any and
every emotion. The danger here is first, a deficiency of pas¬
sion, and second, its correlative, an exclusively pluralistic view
of the world, in which we scarcely ever see what Emerson calls
“the Ever-blessed One,” the unity of life which is the nature
of the individual thing itself.

Further, to correct the generalisations made above, it is in¬
structive to compare two poems, both of early summer, Basho’s,

The voice of the cuckoo!

And the tall
Irises.

ti t t y t v a n oy *> ^ & #

and Davies*

A rainbow and a cuckoo Lord!

PANTHEISM, MYSTICISM, ZEN 221

May never come together again:

May never come
This side the tomb.

In the English poem the feeling df warmth and gratitude to
life, (“Lord”) and its impermanence (“this side the tomb”)
are expressed in order to enhance the soft round voice of the
cuckoo and the soft round arc of the rainbow. The Japanese
poem is very plain, only the sharp shrill voice of the un¬
seen cuckoo 1 and the sharp green spears of the flags and
their purple flowers.

There is a faint touch of morbidity, of self and self-love
in the English poem which we do not find in such poems as
Wordsworth’s To the Cuckoo or Daffodils . Our feelings are at
the same time pushed forward and pulled back; there is no
complete self-abandonment. Compare Bashd’s poem, when the
impermanence of life is the subject; vastly inferior to Davies’
though it be, it has not this double meaning:

The Festival of the Dead :

But from the Burning-ground arises smoke,
Even today.

(d Of all poems about frogs or animals, in this poem of
Basho the actual living creature has least connection with the
poetical meaning. So Charles Lamb, who wrote the cannibal¬
istic essay, Roast Pig, and who says in a letter to John Clare,
August 31, 1832, of frogs,

The nicest little rabbity things you ever tasted. Make
Mrs Clare pick off the hind quarters, boil them p’ain, with
parsley and butter. /The forequarters are not as good.
She may let them hop off by themselves,

i A different bird from the English cuckoo,

222

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

would be just as qualified to understand the poem as anyone
e’se. But this must be modified a little. Neither this poem
nor any other, as poetry, teaches the love of animals or any
other moral quality; a man may dislike all animals, all living
things, all things, and still be a poet. Keats may speak of be¬
coming a sparrow “pecking at the gravel outside the window,”
with his mouth full of sparrow-pie. Nevertheless, just as in
art the significant form is enriched by the subject-matter, so in
this poem, love of old things, of ponds, of water, of frogs, of
the infinite range of the sounds of water, makes a great dif¬
ference to the overtones of the poem. “Overtones” is used
here in its strict musical sense, that; is, it does not mean that
things not mentioned in the poem, such as serenity or silence,
are suggested! “Love” also, means the whole energy of the
personality, untrammeled by likes and dislikes, desire and dis¬
gust.

(d) The time of the poem. Most people take this as being
the day-time, but it is suggested that early evening is better
for two reasons. First, the world is quieter and the sound of
the water more noticeable; second, evening is more in accord
with the spirit of the old pond. Against this it may

be urged that without being told the time specifically or in¬
directly, we have no right to do anything but take it as re¬
ferring to the day-time. We might compromise perhaps, by
taking the time as five or six o’clock in summer, when the eve¬
ning hush begins.

I give two meanings, according as we take the poem to
be what was seen and heard by Basho, or as heard only.

(i) It is just the old pond and the frog and the 4 plop' and
no more and no less. “ No* more ” means there is no symbol¬
ism, no mysticism, no diving into infinity, no listening to the

PANTHEISM, MYSTICISM, ZEN

223

voice of Universal Nature. “No less” means that the mind
is spread out in a smooth glassy surface; the mind is green
(“agreen thought in a green shade”) with goggle eyes and
webbed feet. It is “ Plop! ” The real pond, the real frog, the
real jumping weffe seen, were heard, were seen-heard, when
Basho’s eyes were flicked open by the 'plop' of the water.
This is the state* of being undivided from a thing, from all
things, a state in which we are as Divine as God Himself, de¬
scribed by Fckehart:

Gott ist. ungeschieden von alien Dingen, denn er 1st ihnen
hunger als sie sich selbst. So soil auch der Mensch von
alien Dingen ungeschieden sein .. . Denn Gottes Gottheit
liegt darin dass er von alien Dingen ungeschieden ist.
Datum nimmt auch der Mensch, der ungeschieden ist van
alien Dingen, die Goltheit da, tvo Gott die Gottheit selber
nimmt .

(ii) At the ‘moment of the ‘plop/ the sound and the
silence, the movement and the stillness, were perceived un¬
separated, uncontrasted, unantagonised, as they were before
the Spirit of God brooded over the Chaos. And if you have
seen one piece of reality, you have seen all, for the parts are
not less than the whole. Montaigne says,

Ht si vous avez vecu un jour, vous avez tout vu. Un
jour est tgal a tons jours. II n’y a point d'autre lumiere,
ny d’autre nuit. Ce Soleil, cette Lune, ces Etoiles, cette
disposition, c’est celle nieme que vos aieux ont jouye, et
qui entretiendra vos arritre-neveux.

Non alium videre patres: aliumve nepotes

Aspicent..

Suzuki says, “ This leap is just as weighty a matter as the fall
of Adam from Eden.” This is true enough, but this is mystic¬
ism. If we say, The fall of Ad; i m from Eden is just as weighty

224

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

a matter as the leap of the frog, this is Zen. Mysticism and
Zen overlap, but are distinct. Mysticism sees the infinite
meaning in the (apparently) trivial thing; Zen sees the thing,
the fall of Adam, your own fall out of the wiudow, and no
more. True, everything is in the thing, but it is not seen as
everything, but as the thing. Let me make this clear in some
examples.

The servant has given the dog a bone. He comes into the
room carrying it. He is blind and deaf to everything else, his
world is the size and shape and colour and taste of the bone.
I sit and look at the dog, and for a few moments there is noth¬
ing between me and the dog and the bone, nothing separating,
nothing joining us. You could, as the phrase goes, knock me
down with a feather, or rather, you could not knock me down
with a club, burn me in (ire or drown me in water, because I
am not there at all. Then I rc colled myself, my eternal life is
over and this life continues as before. I look up at the blue
sky. I look and look until my very .soul is without form and
void, until my soul itself is blue and the sky colourless.
One last example from Chinese poetry, the best translation
(Wa ley’s) of the best poem in the world :

Swiftly the years, beyond recall,

Solemn the stillness of this fair morning.

I will clothe myself in spring-clothing,

And visit the slopes of the Eastern Hill.

By the mountain-stream a mist hovers,

Hovers a moment, then scatters.

There comes a wind blowing from the south
That brushes the fields of new corn.

m ft m ft & « m a # m m n m n

m m r* m t at m i? n m 0 m m m » sr

(w m w)

CHAPTER XVI

PANTHEISM, MYSTICISM, ZEN

PART II

Pseudo-pantheists betray themselves at every turn, often
through disclosure of their dualism or their disgust and hatred
of something. So with Pope's famous lines,

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body Nature is, and God the soul,

in the first line we have unity, broken into two in the second.
It continues,

That, changed through all, and yet in all the same,

sticking the two parts together again,

Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame,

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,

Glows in the stars and blossoms in the trees,

Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent:

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,

As full, as perfect in a hair as heart;

which begins to sound like the real thing, but then in the next
lines,

As full, as perfect in vile man that mourns
As the rapt Seraphim that sings and burns,

he lets the cat out of the bag with his version of the missionary
hymn,

.225

226

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Where every prospect pleases,

And only man is vile.

Man is not vile: man is divine, like all other things and more
divine than they, in that he perceives their divinity. To the
pure all things are pure. To the divine all things are divine. 1

In Richard Jefferies we find the same underlying choice
between the beautiful and the ugly, the charming and the
disgusting. To Zen such an attitude is inconceivable but
it is the negation of pantheism also. In The Story of My Heart ,
(the title is enough to give the game away,) he writes,

The rich blue of, the unattainable flower of the sky drew
my soul towards it, and there it rested, for pure colour is
rest of heart.

This is good, and very good, but he proceeds,

By all these I prayed; I felt an emotion of the soul be¬
yond all definition; with these I prayed, as if they were
the keys of an instrument, of an organ, with which I
swelled forth the notes of my soul, redoubling my own
voice by their power,

and this is bad, very bad. This concentration on self, on the
soul, the psyche, limits while it seems to open an infinite vista.

Had any shepherd accidentally seen me lying on the turf,
he would only have thought I was resting a few minutes.

I made no outward show. Who could have imagined the
whirlwind of passion that was going on within me as I re¬
clined there!

From this self-absorbtion, this spiritual masturbation, arise all
fevil habits of thought, misanthropy and sensuality.

l Wird sie (die Seele) dann Gott? Spraiche ich das, das klange un*
glaublich fur die,* derep Sinn dazu zu swach und die es darum ni^ht ver*
stehen. (EckehartJ

PANTHEISM, MYSTICISM, ZEN

227

Unless of the human form, no pictures hold me; the rest
are fiat surfaces. The potters, the architects, meaningless,
Mony. No prayer with these.

He speaks lovingly of the grass, the bees, the yellow wheat,
and then says suddenly what he really felt:

There is nothing human in nature.

Contrast Wordsworth:

For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity.

He utters the old complaint, that

All nature, all the universe we can see, is absolutely
indifferent to us. The trees care nothing for us.

It is time someone put a stop to this kind of maudlin talk.
Is water to gush from the rock when I am thirsty? Is the
stone to move out of the way lest I trip over it, the sun to
pause in heaven to prolong my joys, and to fall like a thunder¬
bolt below the horizon when I am sad? Must nature blubber
with me, and the leaves clap their hands with our joy? And
this from Jefferies of all men, who himself had no sympathy
with Nature, who hated it fanatically, who speaks of “the dis¬
torted fishes, the ghastly cuttles, the hideous eel-like shapes,
the centipede like things,” and says of them, “They have no
shape, form, grace or purpose.” The toad is a tiling of horror,
the snake “is utterly opposed to the ever present Idea in the
mind.” The dog's head is almost as repellent to the hand as
the toad is to the eye. The neck of the horse he will pass, but
the hind legs are “ anti-human.” (Man is truly the impudent

228 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

animal.) 1 He is full of the most absurd ideas and self contra¬
dictions, speaking of “the effortless creed of Confucius”; “all
asceticism is the vilest blasphemy,” on one page, and “I would
submit to a severe discipline and to [sic] go without many
things cheerfully, for the good and happiness'of the human
race,” on the next. He says all diseases are preventible. “ It
is perfectly certain that all accidents are preventible.” He
hopes succeeding generations will be able to be idle, that nine-
tenths of their time will be leisure time, and then, poor fellow,
says, “ I will work towards that end with all my heart.” No
one can stand outside tradition, outside Christianity or Bud¬
dhism, without falling into these aberrations and eccentricities
of thought and feeling.

For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to him¬
self.

Coleridge is another of those on the black list, partly for
insincere imitation of Wordsworth, partly for his own native
lack of religion and poetry.’ He is at the other extreme of
Jefferies, unable to free himself from the cruder interpretations
of the Christian dogma; that is to say, everything is taken un-
poetically and alternates in the most disagreeable and dis¬
concerting manner with Platonism, Pantheism and Words-
worthianism. In Religious Musings, composed at the end of
1794, the argument is the following ho'ch-potch:

Introduction. Person of Christ. His prayer on the Cross.
The process of his Doctrines in the mind of the Individual.

1 On a moonlight night we have a chance to “ see ourselves as others
(the moon) see us*’:

The full moon, and under the trees
Their shadows ■ how beautiful

Compared to mine! (Baishitsu, d. 1853)

Z )J -W.t 4; |: # TS b'\1 (ffc %)

See Cowper, The Task , V, 6-23.

PANTHEISM, MYSTICISM, ZEN 229

Character of the Elect. Superstition . Digression to the present
War. Origin and Uses of Government and Property. The
present State of Society. The French Revolution. Millennium.
Universal Redemption. Conclusion . He expresses the division
of the unity of being in the following odious lines:

Lovely was the death
Of Him whose life was Love! Holy with power
He on the thought-benighted Sceptic beamed
Manifest Godhead, melting into day
What floating mists of dark idolatry
Broke and misshaped the omnipresent Sire:

Coleridge is so sickening, in poetry so vulgar, in religion
so sanctimonious, that I cannot bear to give any more ex¬
tracts ; read also Frost at Midnight which is Wordsworth minus
poetry.

Mrs. Browning often has a similar kind of poetical bad
manners. What really distinguishes Chaucer, Milton, Shake¬
speare, and Wordsworth from the rest, is that they may fall,
and do, into insipidity, into prose, into nonsense, but never inj
to vulgarity. They could never by any conceivable slip of the
mind or pen, write the following lines from Human Life's
Myitery;

We vibrate to the pant and thrill
Wherewith Eternity has curled
In serpent-twine about God's seat;

In Aurora Leigh there are many lines in which the matter is
good but not the manner, and that of course, means the matter
itself has some rotten place inside. What is wrong at bottom
is the duality, which is most pernicious precisely when it apes
a unity. In the middle of the 7th book she speaks, rightly, of
the artist,

230

2EN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Who paints a tree, a leaf, a common stone
With just his hand, and finds it suddenly
A-piece with and coterminous to his soul,

Why else do these things move him, leaf or stone ?

But then the fatal division comes in:

The bird’s not moved, that pecks at a spring-shoot;

Nor yet the horse, before a quarry a-graze;

But man, the two-fold creature, apprehends
The two-fold manner, in and outwardly,

And nothing in the world comes single to him.

Again in the 5th Book:

There’s not a flower of spring
That dies ere June, but vaunts itself allied
By issue and symbol, by significance.

And correspondence, to that spirit-world
Outside the limits of our space and time,

Whereto we are bound.

“Allied,” “symbol,” “significance,” “correspondence,” “that
spirit world,” - all these expressions separate where they seem
to unite. When Mrs. Browning philosophises, it is only as Dr.
Johnson says, a dog walking on its hind legs. When she ex¬
presses her primary intuitions simply, they are often humorous,
and sometimes profound, as for example,

If we say a true word, instantly
We feel ’tis God’s, not ours,

but immediately she begins to gabble and spoil it all:

and pass it on

Like bread at sacrament we taste and pass
Nor handle for a moment, as inde?d
We dared to set up any claim to such!

PANTHEISM, MYSTICISM, ZEN 231

V

Look at a more painful example, a few lines before:

Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God:

But only he who sees takes off his shoes.

The first two lines are by no means the language of Zen,
and as for the third line Zen would point out that the shoes
are equally holy. Nevertheless, it is magnificient poetry ex¬
pressing the all-enveloping spirituality of matter, and the truth
that everything depends on how we look at things. But the
next three lines! — as if she were composing an example of
bathos for a text book of rhetoric:

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more from the first similitude.

Give me the blackberry-eaters, with their shoes on, and no cant
or humbug.

There are other mystics whose direct apprehension of truth
is to some extent confounded by dogmas (taken literally) or
by what is more difficult to avoid, the habits of thought and
vocabulary of their age. An example of the former is the
Roman Catholic, Robert Southwell, martyred at Tyburn, 1594-
5 at the age of 24, after three years of torture in the Tower of
London. Each of his poems has something, some aspect of
Zen in it. In Times Go By Turns, the instability of human
life, yet its sufficiency:

Thus with succeeding turns, God tempereth all,

That man may hope to rise yet fear to fall.

In Loss In Delay, the “Do it now!" principle:

Good is best when soonest wrought,

232 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

and the principle of not acting according to princi^es but ac¬
cording to the circumstances, with a whole mind,

Out of season, out of price.

The Burning Bab?, perhaps the most remarkable of all
English religious poems, reminds one qi the Old English The
Rood, where the cross itself speaks of the sufferings of Christ.

THE BURNING BABE

As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to

glow;

And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,

A pretty babe all burning bright did in the air appear,

Who scorched with exceeding heat such floods of tears did

shed,

As though His floods should quench his flames with what

< his tears were fed;

Alas! quoth He, but newly born in fiery heats of fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire

but I!

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and

scorns;

The fuel justice layeth on, and mercy blows the coals;

The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls;
For which, as now on fire I am, to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath, to wash them in my blood:

With this He vanished out of sight, and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas-day.

This is full of the most shocking mixed metaphors and con¬
tradictions, to which Southwell has a Shakespearean indif¬
ference. With some changes of meLaphor it could be equally
well applied to Buddha, when we think of the years of anguish
of mind and body he suffered before his enlightenment. To

PANTHEISM, MYSTICISM, 2EN

233

bring the poem down to its lowest and most understandable,
level, we may say that virtue, Zen, truth, babes, are infectious,
contagious. So are all things, everything is infectious. Yes,
but virtue more than vice, Zen more than wabbling, truth
more than error, Christ more than Judas. “A pretty burning
babe shedding tears ”: he is pretty because “ Beauty is truth,
truth beauty,” burning, because “Zen is boiling oil over a fire,”
a babe because truth is simple. So Goethe says:

Jch sage immer und wiederhole es, die Welt kSnntc nicht,
bestehen, wenn sie nicht so einfach ware. Dieser elende
Boden wird nun schon tausend Jahre bebaut, und seine
Krafte sind immer dieselbigen. Ein wenig Regen, ein
wenig Sonne, und es wird jeden Fruhling wieder griin.

And in the following well-known passage, he uses the simile
of children to express this directness and naturalness of truth:

Alles Denken zum Denken hilft nichts: man muss von
Natur rightig sein, so dass die guten Einfalle immer wie
freie Kinder Gottes vor uns dastehen und uns zurufen: da
sind wir!

“Shedding tears” is what St. Thomas of Aquinus calls grief,
as distinct from mercy. In mercy we stand outside, in grief
for ourselves or for others, there is a complete identification
with the other person and no feeling of my sympathy for him.

Mercy is compassion for another’s unhappiness, and
therefore regards someone else, not ourselves, except by
likeness. But as it is grief that we feel towards ourselves,
as when we suffer a cruelty, so it is grief, nob mercy, we
feel in the sufferings of persons who are so joined as to be
part of us. 1

These “floods of tears” are of the essence of Zen, however

1 Quoted in Poetic Experience, Thomas Gilby, page 80. This is a
book worth buying; not a book to be borrowed.

234 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

stoical and heroic it may otherwise seem. “ But newly bom,”
implies what the mystics call the Eternal Birth of Christ The
expression “washed in blood ” is a very strange one and shows
the power that experience gives to the mind to combine in
thought what words divide. Intellectually impossible to con¬
ceive and esthetically disgusting, this phrase, which seems to
occur first in Revelation I, 5, “Unto him that loved us and
washed us from our sins in his own blood,” is used to express
the most profound and fundamental truth of the Christian
religion, the redemption of the world by the voluntary suffer-
ing of good men. Buddhists therefore should not despise this
apparently repulsive phrase, for it represents equally the funda¬
mental of Buddhism. And if anyone thinks “the bread of
life” is poetical and “the blood of the Lamb” is odious, let
him remember Herbert’s words:

Look on meat; think it dirt, then eat a bit,

And say withal—“ earth to earth I commit.”

The poem I Dye Alive was written in prison, probably dur¬
ing intervals of torture and under the shadow of the scaffold:

0 life! what letts thee from a quicke decease?

O death! what draws thee from a present praye ?

My feast is done, my soul would be at ease,

My grace is saide; 0 death! come take away.

“My grace is saide”; this is the attitude of Zen. Grace, that
is, thanks, is said, said once for all for everything past, present,
future in the history of the universe; and said somewhere at
the bottom of the mind as we receive all the gifts of God one
after another.

1 live but such a live as ever dyes;

I dye, but such a death as never endes;

PANTHEISM, MYSTICISM, ZEN 23S

My death to end my dying life denyes,

And life my living death no whitt amends.

Southwell is speaking of his life in death just before execution,
but as Victor Hugo says, we are all sentenced to death with ^
an indefinite reprieve, and what Southwell said of himself at/
that time is equally true of everyone at each moment as it
comes. We do not live, we do not die, we live-die. What is;
the relation of this living-dying and the actual death and dis¬
solution in time which we all suffer ? Simply that the living*
dying stops. We stop living and we stop dying.

Thus still I dye, yet still I do revive;

My living death by dying life is fedd;

Grace more than nature keeps my hart alive,

Whose idle hopes and vague desires are deade.

“ Grace ” and “ nature ” is of course a false distinction; “ idle
hopes ” and ** vague desires ” also is a mistake, but one hardly
likes to point this out to a man about to die a degrading.death.
All hopes are idle, all desires are vain; human life is useless
and profitless. Thus hopes are not idle, desires not vain, since
these words, being universally applicable, have no meaning;
hopes are hopes, desires are desires, human life is human life,
no more, no less.

Not where I breath, but where I love, I live;

Not where I love, but where I am, I die;

The life I wish, must future glory give,

The deaths I feele in present daungers lye.

The first two lines rise up like a wave to Zen, the last two
fall back towards the dogma of a future state of the soul. The
next poem, Of the Blessed Sacrament of the Aulter, is very good
indeed. There are very few religious poems in English which
surpass this in profound thought, sincerity and dignity.

236 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

The angells’ eyes, whome veyles cannot deceive,

Might best disclose that best they do descerne;

Men must with sounde and silent faith receive
More than they can by sense or reason lerne;

God’s poure our proofes, His workes our witt exceede,

The doer’s might is reason of His deede.

“ Sense or reason ” cannot grasp things as wholes but only the
parts. “The doer’s might is reason of His deeds,” Southwell
applies to God only, but it applies equally to us when there
is Zen in our activity. It i£ the true meaning of “Might is
Right.” This natural flowing of the action out of our deepest
self, this inevitability, is what characterises the greatest works
of art and the most trivial perfect behaviour. What Southwell
really says is, “The action is itself the reason of the act.”

A body is endow’d with ghostly rightes;

And Nature’s worke from Nature’s law is free;

In heavenly sunrie lye hidd eternall lightes,

Lightes cleere and neere, yet them no eye can see;

Dedd formes a never-dyinge life do shroude;

A boundless sea lyes in a little cloude.

The first two lines express the mind’s absolute freedom,
God’s absolute freedom. God is a spirit. Man is a spirit.
Were there no likeness between them there could be no love,
no knowledge of each other. In a simple state of culture,
freedom from Nature’s law was conceived of as miracle. Later
this was found to be not merely irrational but an arbitrary
interference that somehow or other could not satisfy our innate
idea of freedom. Freedom, it was felt, is doing what you like;
but freedom is Zen and Zen means liking what you do. The
doing and the liking are of course not separate things. The
action and its indivisible and invariable concomitant, its hap¬
piness, is free, is the reason of the activity. “Ih heavenly

PANTHEISM, MYSTICISM, ZEN 237.

sunne lye hidd eternall lightesthis is what Blake saw when
he looked at the sun; what Basho saw when he looked at the
moon; what I see when I look at my dog. “Dedd formes a
never-dying life do shroude,” is not a very satisfactory expres¬
sion. The shrouding is done by us, and the form is dead only
in the sense that

it is not the form that exists but the composite, which is
determined by the form as a cerfain kind of thing. 1

“A boundless sea lyes in a little cloude,” is expanded, in South¬
well’s usual way, into the next four verses.

The God of hoastes in slender hoste doth dwell.

Yea, God and man with all to ether dewe,

That God that rules the heavens and rifled hell,

That man whose death did us to life renewe:

That God and man that is the angells’ blisse,

In forme of bredd and wyne our nurture is.

The pun in the first line, like some of Hood’s, and the play on
words in

We thought her dying when she slept,

And sleeping when she died

has an extraordinary power in it. It is the best I know.

Whole may His body be in smallest breadd,

Whole in the whole, yea whole in every crumme;
With which be one or be tenn thousand fedd,

All to each one, to all but one doth cumme;

And though ech one as much as all receive,

Not one too much, nor all too little have.

From this verse we see how to read the story of the Feed¬
ing of the Multitude. It is a parable, like that of the walking

1 Gilby, Poetic Experience , p. 7.

238 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

on the water, which Goethe said he loved better than any
other. We find it in the mediaeval problem how many
devils could stand on the head of a pin. It is resurrected by
Chesterton in The Holy of Holies .

Speller of the stones and weeds,

Skilled in Nature's crafts and creeds,

Tell me what is in the heart
Of the smallest of the seeds.

God Almighty, and with Him
Cherubim and Seraphim,

Filling all eternity—

Adonai KJohim. , .

There is the same thing in the Ynima Kyo, 1 where Yuima ac¬
comodates thousands of people in his one small room.

One soule in man is all in everye part;

One face at once in many mirrhors shynes;

One fearfull noyse doth make a thousand start;

One eye at once of countless things defynes;

If proofes of one in many, nature frame,

God may in straunger sort performe the same.

This kind of argument, popularised by Drummond in his
Natural Law in the Spiritual World, is weakening to South¬
well’s declaration. If someone says, “ Death rather than dis :
honour! ” we believe it and, for a moment, could act on it.
When we begin to think about it, analyse it, argue for and
against it, it loses all its power to move us.

God present is at once in everye place,

Yett God in every place is ever one;

So may there be by gifts of ghostly grane,

One man in many rooms, yett filling none;

Sith angelts may effects of bodyes shewe,

God angells’ gifts on bodyes may bestowe.

I See Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism , First Series, pages 86-7,

PANTHEISM, MYSTICISM, ZEN * 239

There is something very beautiful in the first two lines
both in the thought and the expression of it. The idea of the
last two lines seems to be this. In the Old Testament we have
several examples of the materialisation of angels, spirit mani¬
festing properties of matter. So we may expect the reverse
operation, the spiritualisation of matter, in which the body
may exhibit, as in the miracles of the Gospels, the properties
of pure spirit, that is to say, may be freed of the limitations
of time and space.

The unity of God and man is expressed also by Herbert in
Affliction .

My heart did heave and there came forth ‘ O God ! 9
By that I knew that Thou wast in the grief,

To guide and govern it to my relief,

Making a scepter of the rod:

Hadst Thou not had Thy part.

Sure the unruly sigh had broke my heart.

To understand the truth of the first two lines we'must re¬
member Wordsworth's

There is a comfort in the strength of love;

'Twill make a thing endurable, which else

Would overset the brain, or break the heart.

(Michael 11. 448-450)

There is a comfort in the depth of the emotion, if it is deep
enough to go down to where God is. This idea of Christ suf¬
fering with us and we with him, is that of Amida's 18th vow,
recorded in the Daim urydjukyo 11; fig ft?):

If 1 become a Buddha and any one living being of the
ten quarters, desiring with deep sincerity, faith and joy, to
be born into my realm, is not so born, I will not accept
Perfect Understanding.

240 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

& A;e. u

T» -ft H! r- ife /u i fk U Pi 3? h ft « A, C> * L 4
■+£' -f* /v (£ IK % % ft f) C, S xCo

In Christian terms this means that Christ will not ascend to
Heaven while one sinner remains in Hell. Thus he shares in
his own person, our grief and pain. Our rod is his rod. But
his rod is a sceptre, and thus our rod is that same sceptre. We
suffer, but we are the master of our suffering which is also our
relief. “ Foul is fair and fair is foul.”

But since Thy breath gave me both life and shape.

Thou know’st my tallies; and when there’s assign’d
So much breath to a sigh, what’s then behinde?

Or if some yeares with it escape,

The sigh then onely is
A gale to bring me sooner to my blisse.

This verse is a little difficult. What I think Herbert means is
this: God, who gave me the vital energy which both supports
life and give-i it form, in this case, a human form, knows my
capacities and when he alio Is to me such a violent emotion, I
perceive an indication of my nearness to the Source of Things,
to Reality, to God Himself. Suppose you say such intense grief
burns life away, shortens it; I answer, so much the better.

Thy life on earth was grief, and Thou art still
Constant unto it, making it to be
A point of honour now to grieve in me,

And in Thy members suffer ill.

They who lament one crosse,

Thou dying dayly, praise Thee to Thy losse.

At this vital point Christianity and Buddhism coincide. Not
one Cross, but many; not one Buddha, but many. And yet it
is one huge Cross, one great Buddha, for

PANTHEISM/ MYSTICISM, ZEN 241

The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together.

This unity of Nature and Man is stated directly by Words¬
worth, in Lines Written in Early Spring ;

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran,

and indirectly, but using a similar metaphor of ‘linking,* by
Basho, in

Ah, hanging bridge!

Ivy-ropes

Entwine existence!
h t> tSt&frO e>

Love is both the cause and the effect of this union, this reali¬
sation of original unity, as Wordsworth says in The Excursion,
I,194,

' the lesson deep of love which he
Whom Nature, by whatever means, has taught
To feel intensely, cannot but receive.

Thus Basho’s devotion-to Nature and I)ante*s to Beatrice are
an identical state of mind. Now we can see how Nature, by
whatever means, in flowers or in those whom we love, teaches
us, we see how

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

So when Bash6 says

The harvest moon!

Among us, none

Has a face of beauty.

242 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

we are not to take this in the literal, comparative meaning,
but in the sense of

La vista sua face ogni cosa umile,

(La Vita Nuova, par. xxvii, the sonnet beginning, Vede per-
fettamente ogni salute.) The beauty of moon or woman when
perceived purely, without desire of possession, has the effect
of dissolving our pride. Dante says again,

Negli occhi porta la mia donna Amore;

Perche si fa gentil cib ch’ella mira:

Ov’ ella passa, ogni uom ver lei si gira,

E cui sal'uta fa tremar lo core,

Sicche bassando il viso, tutto smuore,

E d’ogni suo difetto alor sospira:

Fuggon dinanzi a lei superbia ed ira:

Aiutatemi, donne, a farle onore.

Ogni dolcezza, ogni pensiero umile

Ncisce nel core a chi parlar la sente;

Ond’ & laudato chi prima la vide.

Quel ch’ella par quand’ un poco sorride,

Non si puo dicer, ne tener a mente,

Si e nuovo miracolo gentile.

(In English, with all the music, that is, half the meaning gone,)

Love in my lady’s eyes is dwelling,

Softening all those on whom she looks:

Where’er she walks all men turn to behold her,
And her salute makes throb their hearts.

Lowering his face, he pales

And sighs at all his weakness;

Before her flees all pride and wrath:

O help me, ladies, that I do her honour!

PANTHEISM, MYSTICISM, ZEN

243

All sweetness, and humble thoughts,

Rise in the heart of him who hears her speak;
Thus he is praised who sees her first.

That which she appears when faintly smiling,

No one can tell, nor hold in mind-
Such is the miracle so rare and sweet!

Compare Masefield's lyric at the end of The Everlasting Mercy:

O lovely lily clean,

O lily springing clean,

O lily bursting white,

Dear lily of delight,

Spring in my heart agen
That I may flower to men.

Just as the beauty of Beatrice, springing up in the heart of
Dante, united him to her, so the beauty of the cherry blossoms,
ever-blooming in the mind of Baslid, united him to his old
friend.

Our two lives:

Between them is the life

Of the cherry flowers.

feroco m m f- & m tr &

CHAPTER XVII

“RELIGIOUS” POETRY

There is only one thing more dismal than an anthology of
religious poetry, and that is a book of jokes. This is not be¬
cause religious poetry is on the whole poor in quality, both as
religion and as poetry, but because “ it has designs upon us,”
like the book of jokes. It wants to push us into the arms of
Jesus; it wants to push us off this planet into space, into in¬
finity, into eternity. Once you understand that religion is
poetry and poetry*is religion, you can never talk about “re¬
ligious ” poetry, you can never take religion and poetry to be
two different things, as Professor Suzuki does in his Zen Bud¬
dhism and its Influence on Japanese Culture. He translates
Kikaku’s

mr&M&V ft ft

The tree-frog

“ Riding the basho-leaf,

Sways and quivers.

and says of this frog,

In it and through it one can read the gravest religious truth.
He quotes

By a little kitten
Sniffed at,

Creeps the slug unconcerned.

by Saimaro a contemporary of Basho and Kikaku. The

RELIGIOUS’* POETRY

245

original, $£ 0) tc. fo T £> h *fs does not say “ creeps/’
or “ unconcerned 991 ; it is only,

Sniffed at

By a kitten—

The snail!

There is not an atom of truth, not a particle of poetry, not a
spark of Zen here; only sentiment and sentimentality, seen by
Saimaro, or as Suzuki himself says, “ a bit of human playful¬
ness and sweetness/* He then gives Buson’s famous verse,
translated once before in the present book, and differently,)

The butterfly

Resting upon the temple bell,

Asleep.

The surroundings, the historic associations, the quiet sun¬
shine have calmed the mind, emptied it and prepared it for
this slight thrill of surprise at finding a butterfly in such an
unlikely place. The colour (supposing it to be a white butter¬
fly, the commonest,) the delicacy, the lightness, the feeling that
it may be gone the next instant - all this is brought out in con¬
trast with the dark colour, the weight, solidity, rigidity of the
massive bell. And this is all But Professor Suzuki says, 2

The haiku is not merely descriptive, it is of religious
connotation. Human life after all is not any better than
that of the butterfly, it gains its meaning only when it is
connected with something far more enduring and all-sus¬
taining. The playfulness, however, Buson the poet had in
mind comes from the butterfly’s utter unawareness of any
sudden event which may shake the very foundation of its
existence. The noon hour is come and the monk may

1 To take as “unconcerned** is just possible as an explanation,
but not as~a translation.

* Page 263.

246 ZEN IN ENGLISH ~ LITERATURE

strike the bell and send out a series of terrific vibrations.
This kind of uncertainty always clings to all forms of life.
Man tries to avert it by so-called science, but his greed
asserts itself, and all scientific calculations are upset. If
nature does not destroy, man destroys himself. There is
a great deal of philosophy at the back of this epigrammatic
utterance of Buson. 1

This reminds us of the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland:

“Tut, tut, child,” said the Duchess, “Everything’s got a
moral if only you can find it.”

Buson himself, after he had composed the poem, may have had
such thoughts of the contrast of active and passive, the sym¬
bolism of life and death in the butterfly and the bell. • I hope
not. But we are all prone to this kind of thing, this sentimen¬
talising, unless we remember that poetry, like religion, must
be ascetic, must have the element of poverty in it. In poetry
also,

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Wordsworth, the most ascetic of English poets (Hardy
comes a close second,) fell into this poetico-sentimentality
rarely. One example, a conscious one, is in Lines Written in
Early Spring:

And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

l What he should have said of Buson’s haiku, is what he says of “A
Fishing Boat,” byBaen, facing page 270:

Mere suggestiveness, to my mind, is not enough to describe this. The
idea of “All in One, One in AH’' must be recognised here. When an
object is picked up, everything else, One and All, comes along with it,
not in the way of suggestion, but all-inclusively, in the sense that the
abject is complete in itself. (My italics.)

"RELIGIOUS* POETRY 34?

The budding twigs spread out their fan,

To catch the breezy air;

And I must think, do all I can,

That there was pleasure there.

Nobody wants to know what Wordsworth’s fcyjh, his philoso*
phy was, or what he thought about this or that. We can all
think as well as Wordsworth, or better. We cannot approach
his power, in the year 1798, of

a heart

That watches and receives.

Wordsworth, up to the age of 30 would have been surprised,
not to say puzzled, if you had asked him to write a religious
poem. As he lay dying, Basho’s disciples asked him to write a
religious poem (a death-poem). He said with profound truth
that every poem he had written since the age of forty had
been his death-poem, a religious poem. Symbolism, panthe¬
ism, mysticism, religiosity, these are not Zen. Zen is poetry.
Compare Coleridge’s milk and water, wishy-washy

He prayeth best who loveth best
The things both great and small.

For the good God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all

with a real religious poem, by Taigi. The circumstances
of the poem are thus well described by Mr. Miyamori in
An Anthology of Haiku:

The poet was walking home along the road by night.

A dog barked at him. He wanted to throw a stone at it.

So he looked ail round for a stone on the road bathed in
an icy bright winter moon; but to his mortification, he
could not find one.

This is the poem itself:

ZEN - IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

m

Not a single stone

To throw at the dog,—

The wintry moon!

0 >

If you wish to Tcnow where the religion is in this, think of the
lines in Expostulation and Reply ,

Nor less I deem that there are powers
Which of themselves our minds impress.

“Of themselves.” Here again, man's extremity, (just that
moment of ego-lessness when mental and physical action is
suspended), is God’s opportunity—something, Something, some
Power, slides imperceptibly into the mind in the form of cold
moonlight.

Think you, mid all this mighty sum
Of things forever speaking,

That nothing of itself will come.

But we must still be seeking ?

Zen, religion, poetry, “ comes of itself.” What then about

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find;
knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

How we can we seek and yet not seek ? This Gordian knot is
cut for us by Roshi, Chapter XI:

Thirty spokes makes a wheel; but it is the empty space at
the centre that gives it its use. Clay is moulded into a
vessel, but the empty space is the useful part. So we see
that the existence and use of things has its basis in non¬
existence.

(Following the interpretation of Inope Shu f en, Roshi no
Shin Kenkyu , pp. 80-84)

- “RELIGIOUS'* POETRY

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We are to ask fervently, to seek passionately, to knock madly
— but it must be for nothing. When our self is all asked,
sought, knocked away, everything is given, found, opened.
We empty ourselves and God fills us. Emerson says,

When half-gods go,

The Gods arrive.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

Christian Religious poetry (not mere verse) gains much
and loses nothing from an interpretation according to Zen.
Let us take two poems, at the extremes of feeling, of mildness
and ferocity^ Herbert’s Love, and Isaac Watts’ The Day of
Judgement . Without twisting the thoughts or spoiling in any
way the original meaning of the poet, let us re-read them in
the light of Zen, and universalise them.

LOVE

Love bade me welcome! Yet my soul drew bapk,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

If I lacked anything.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:

Love said, you shall be he.

I the unkind, ungrateful ? Ah, my dear,

I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

Who made the eyes but I ?

250

ZEN tN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?

My dear, then I will serve.

You must sit down says Love, and taste my meat:

So 1 did sit and eat.

“ Love,” here means Love, not love, the opposite of hate; it
means Nature, Reality, God, Life. ‘‘Guilty of dust and sin.”
This dust and sin is not in the actions, which must be, objec¬
tively speaking, dusty and sinful, in a dusty and sinful world,
but in the will. This defection, this apostasy of the will is ex¬
pressed in “ drew back.” “ Quick-eyed Love.” How quick all
things are, quick to bless, quick to curse. We fall over and
swifter than thought, the ground smites us hip and thigh. But
the ground is equally quick to support us when we fall, lest we
fall further. How quick the pain and yet how quick nature runs
to help us. So in the next poem, The Day of Judgment, we have

the gaping waters,

Quick to devour them,

but they are just as quick to uplift us, to quench our thirst,
as to kill us with dropsy. “ If l lacked any thing.” What do
^elack? Nothing at all. What do we possess? Nothing at
all. “ I the unkind, the ungrateful.” In general, the spirit of
the Pharisee, and that of the Publican who beat on his breast,
is the same. Pride and humility are only the back and front
of the same thing; true repentance wipes the slate clean,
further remorse is only masochism, an excuse for non-action.
“ Who made the eyes but I ? ” If we grasp this, there is no
excuse for false humility:

I am the doubter and the doubt.

*‘I have marred them.” How can we follow our instincts when

“RELIGIOUS” POETRY Ssl

we have such bad ones ? “ Who bore the blame ? H God is to
blame for everything, but we are God. Christ dies for us, not
once“, but daily, eternally. Yet we are one with Christ and he
with us. God, Christ is to blame, and we are to blame in so
far as we realise the vicarious responsibility of our (original)
unity with the Godhead. We are guilty of sin just as Christ
was and God is. We are innocent of it in so far as we bear
anything and everything for the sake of others.

The intellect beats its wings in vain against the bars of
this intellectual cage, but as soon as we say, “Innocent or
guilty, I do the will of God,” that is, “My dear, then 1 will
serve,” all the problem disappears. But even so, we cannot
serve God. God serves us, God serves in us. “Taste my
meat.” What is the taste of this meat? This, with the an¬
swer, will make a Mondo , and everyone must answer for him¬
self. “So I did sit and eat.” No gibble-g abble, no humming
and hawing; just sit when you sit, eat when you eat, nothing
poetical, nothing religious in it, and yet it is the poetical life,
the religious life, the life of Zen.

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT

When the fierce North-wind with his airy forces

Rears up the Baltic to a foaming fury;

And the red lightning with a storm of hail comes
Rushing amain down.

How the poor sailors stand.amazed and tremble!

While the hoarse thunder like a bloody trumpet,

Roars a loud onset to the gaping waters
Quick to devour them.

Such shall the noise be, and the wild disorder

(If things eternal may be like these earthly.)

Such the dire terror when the great Archangel
Shakes the creation;

252

2EN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Tears the strong pillars of the vault of Heaven,

Breaks up old marble, the repose of princes,

Sees the graves open, and the bones arising,

Flames all around them.

Hark, the shrill outcries of the guilty wretches!

Lively bright horror and amazing anguish
Stare thro* their eyelids, while the living worm lies
Gnawing within them.

Thoughts, like old vultures, prey upon their heart-strings,
And the smart twinges, when the eye beholds the
Lofty Judge frowning, and a flood of vengeance
Rolling before Him.

Hopeless immortals, how they scream and shiver,

While devils push them to the pit wide-yawning, •

Hideous and gloomy, to receive them headlong
Down to the centre!

Stop here, my fancy: (all away, ye horrid
Doleful ideas!) come, arise to Jesus,

How He sits God-like ! and the saints around Him
Throned, yet adoring!

O may I sit there when he comes triumphant,

Dooming the nations! then ascend to glory,

While our Hosannas all along the passage
Shout the Redeemer.

4

Now is the Day of Salvation, now is the Day of Judgment. As
the 6th Patriarch says,

... An ordinary man is Buddha; desire and p ission is en¬
lightenment. One thought of folly makes a man an ordi¬
nary man. The next enlightened thought, and he is a
Buddha.

This means that at every moment we are saved or damned, at

^RELIGIOUS" EOETRY 255

every moment 1 there are hosannas or the sound of the bloody
trumpet: We are either " throned yet adoring/' or screaming
and shivering.

Things are in the saddle
And ride mankind.

If we are in this condition (and how few are not), the living
worm lies gnawing within us. The man next door, the news¬
papers, our money in the bank-everything “ preys upon the
heart-strings/'

My apprehensions come in crowds;

I dread the rustling of the grass;

The very shadows of the clouds

Have power to shake me as they pass.

This is not only the condition of Margaret, it is the story of
Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, of Hamlet, Lear and
Othello, where-desire, passion, greed, lust, in a word, attach¬
ment to things good and bad,

Tears up the strong pillars of the vault of Heaven,
Breaks up old marble, the repose of princes,

and we hear “the shrill outcries of the guilty wretches and
watch their “ lively bright horror and amazing anguish/'

1 There is an expansion of this thought in the following passage from
Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha:

Der Sunder, der icli bin und der du bist, der ist Sunder, aber er wird
einst wieder Brahma sein, er wird einst Nirvana erreichen, wird Buddha
sein — uhd nun siehe: dies “Einst” ist Tauschung, ist nur Gleichnis!
Der Sunder ist nicht auf dem Weg zur Buddhaschaft unterwegs, er ist
nicht in einer Entwickelung begriffen obwohl unser Dcnken sich die
Dinge nicht anders vorzustellen weiss. Nein, in dem Sunder ist, ist
jetzt und heute schon der kunftige Buddha, seine Zukunft ist alle schon
da, du hast in ihm, in dir, in jedem den werdenden, den mdglichen, den
verborgenen Buddha zu verehren. Die Welt, Freund Govinda, ist nicht
unvollkommen, oder auf einem langsarnen Wege zur Voll o nmenheit
begriffen: nein, sie ist in jedem Augenblick vollkoramen, alle Siinde
tragt schon die Gnade in sich, alle kleinen Kinder baben schon den
Qreis in sich, alle Saughnge den Tod, alle Sterbenden das ewige Leben,

254 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

There is no rest for the wicked,

and “the wicked” means here not robbers and murderers, but
all us ordinary, greedy, self-seeking creatures, who want pleas¬
ure without pain, profit without loss, life without, death.
Bacon says in his Of Marriage and Single Life,

He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to
fortune, 1

but he who has anything, has given hostages to fortune. Only
he who has nothing has all things; he has everything and
nothing can be taken away from him. This is the attitude
expressed in,

For gods delight in gods,

And thrust the weak aside;

To him who scorns their charities,

Their arms are open wide.

The devils who push us into the pit and the angels that raise
us to paradise, are the same; and what are they? All the
things in the world.

The wings of Time are black and white
Pied with morning and with night,

but to the eyes of God there is no day or night, He needs no
light to see nor darkness for slumber. So we, if we can only
take these devils (all the apparently hostile things), as they are
(that is, as God sees them\ they are ministering angels, and we
are raised aloft on the waves that “gape to devour us.” Love,
God, Nature, Reality, has no mercy, only justice and truth, tit
for tat, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

l Compare the Japanese proverb, “Children areacangue in the three
worlds.” fci'ttl)

“RELIGIOUS” POETRY

Heaven and earth are merciless,
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m

says Roshi. The “flood of vengeance” is always rolling; it is
unescapable. The wages of sin is death; the wages of good¬
ness is life. God is “ the frowning judge,” Fudo, with the up¬
lifted sword. God is love, Kwannon, with a thousand arms to
save.

1 would like to quote some lines from Herbert’s Advice to
Churchgoers, which has more common sense and humour than
any other religious poem known to me.

In church

God is more there, than thou.

Not only in church but in every place,, wherever we are, God
is more there than we, — in two ways. First, in the simple
sense that “JnHim we live and move and have our being;”
second, in the more profound sense that “In us He lives and
moves and has his being.” The “ I ” which looms so large to
us is a hallucination, a bubble that the truth is constantly
pricking, a scum on the clear water of eternity, a delirium of
“life’s fitful fever.”

All equal are within the church’s gate,

and outside it also. The fundamental principle of religion is
respect, respect for self, for Other human beings, for animals,
and for inanimate things. Christ had the “disciple which
Jesus loved,” and so also have we, and so must we, as human
beings, but Heaven has no favourites/ and beyond our human
likes and dislikes, there must be for us also the Ground of Ex¬
istence (“within the Church's gate,”) where all things are

256

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Who marks in church-time others’ symmetry,

Makes all their beauty his deformity.

Human beauty is one of the chief causes of moral ugliness, but
beauty is in the eye of the beholder. “ If thine eye be single,
thy whole body shall be full of light.” When we can talk
with the same degree (not kind) of interest to an old lady as
to her pretty niece, what a blessed state this is!

Do not grudge
To pick out treasures from an earthen pot,

or a chamber-pot. To God, a mpn is the same, on a chamber¬
pot or on a throne. 'All men are naked under their clothes. A
tiger seems a nobler animal than a bed-bug. There seem to
be vessels of honour and vessels of dishonour, and in this short
life we can hardly escape this feeling, but at the back of our
minds, in the bottom of our hearts, there must be the full re¬
alisation that there is no difference between birth and death,
the entrance and the exit, good morning and good night, the
dining-room and the lavatory.

There is a short piece of writing by Rikeiho 1 (Yikyubo, in
Korean) 1168-1241 A.D., poet, musician and Prime Minister,
which illustrates this fact of the equality of things:

A friend of mine came and said, “ Yesterday evening I saw
some rascal beat to death a dog which was wandering
about there. It was such a pitiful sight, and I was so up¬
set by it, I resolved never to touch dog's flesh again.” I
said to him, “ Last night I saw a man sitting by the fire
cracking lice and burning them. I was so upset I made
up my mind never to kill another louse.” My friend said
indignantly, “A louse v is a very small thing; what I saw
W*as a big animal done to death and because I felt so
grieved, 1 told you about it. Why do you answer me so

l See a later page.

“RfetlGIOHS” POETRY 257

facetiously? ” I replied, “ All things with life and breath,
from common men to oxen, horses, pigs, sheep, down to
insects, mole-crickets and ants,— all, without exception,
love life and hate death. Do you imagine for a moment
that big animals only dislike to die and the little ones don’t
mind it ? Thus the death of a louse is no different from
that of a dog. This is quite clear; why should you sup¬
pose I was talking flippantly? Bite your own ten fingers
and see. The thumb hurts; but how about the rest of the
fingers ? In one body there is no distinction between large
and small members. All that has blood and flesh feels the
same pain. So it is with all things that have received life
and breath : how can you think that one hates death and
another finds it pleasant? Now you go home and quietly
meditate on this, and when you see that the horns of a
snail are the same as those of a bull, the wren of equal
value with the mighty Rukh, then come, and we’ll talk of
religion again.”

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258 ZgN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

The worst speak something good: if all want sense,

God takes a text, and preacheth patience.

All does want sense. Things just are, events just occur: All
things are senseless. They have no meaning beyond the fact
of the things themselves. This is the region Christians get to
when they are asked, “ Who made God? ” “ God takes a text
and preacheth patience.” This is one of the most beautiful
thoughts in English literature. The practical meaning is the
same as, “ We suffer fools gladly,” but “ God takes a text and
preaches,”—this is wonderful! It is Wordsworth’s

Let nature be your teacher,

but taking “ nature ” in the true sense Of all that exists. For
God is always speaking through the most trivial things as well
as the greatest. In the Introduction to the 8th Case of the
Hekiganroku, it says,

At one time, one blade of grass is as effective as a sixteen
foot golden Statue of Buddha. At another time, a sixteen
foot golden Statue of Buddha is as effective as a blade of
grass.

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God is always preaching, through the biggest fool or knave,
as through the greatest saint or genius. This is the meaning
of Emerson’s

What you are, speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you
say,

that is, Reality speaks so loudly in you I can’t hear what you
are saying to distract me from it,

And lastly:

RELIGIOUS” POETRY

259 ,

God sent him, whatsoever he be.

Nero and Caligula, Judge Jeffries, all the monsters of antiquity,
as well as Marcus Aurejius; the germs of cholera, the scorpion,
as well as the puppy and tile kitten.

There is a poem of Vaughan which I wish to quote and
comment on, even though I do not more than half understand
it. It contrasts the false life with the true.

QUICKNESS

False life! a foil, and no more, when
Wilt thou be gone?

The foul deception of all men,

That would not have the true come on!

Thou art a moon-like toil; a blind
Self-posing state;

A dark contest of waves and wind,

A mere tempestuous debate.

Life is a fixed discerning light,

Doth vivify

And shine and smile, and hath the skill
To please without eternity.

Thou art a toilsome mole, or less,

A moving mist.

But life is, what none can express,

A quickness, which my God hath kissed .

The false life is a foil to the true, that is, sin and imperfection
are the material out of which the true grows by contrast.
Wordsworth expresses the “ that would not have the true come
on,” more indulgently, in

To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man,

Forget the glories he hath known.

And that imperial palace whence he came.

260 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

44 A moon-like toil ”; whether we take it as the phases of the
moon or the ebb and flow of the tides caused by the moon,
this means the dull, monotonous round of mechanical plea¬
sures and meaningless pains. “A blind, self-posing state” is
the senseless, automatic life, which is at the mercy of every
event, happy in success, doleful in failure. 44 A dark contest
of waves and wind,” again, expresses the state of being blown
about by every wind of doctrine, being tossed up and down by
the waves of circumstance. 44 Life is a fixed, discerning light.”
Here there is an echo of Shakespeare on love:

It is an ever-fixM mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken.

44 A knowing joy ” is what Bacon spoke of when he said,

No pleasure is comparable to the standing on the vantage

ground of truth.

44 The skill to please without eternity,” is the property of all
existing things. Eternity, infinity, are not necessary to the
true life, which is complete, with which we can be satisfied
and pleased, at any moment, in any place. “A quickness which
my God hath kissed .” This remarkable line expresses briefly
the nature of Reality as we see it. Our words make mincemeat
of it, yet it can be expressed in words, if we look beyond the
words into the fact. Life, that is, living, has two elements in
it which we call material and spiritual, higher and lower,
human and divine, - a foolish distinction, but intellectually in¬
evitable. The word 44 quickness ” suggests mere animal living, t
mere existence . 1 ‘‘Which my God hath kissed,” is the en¬
lightened life, conscious of itself and its divinity. This 44 kiss”

1 Though we say “ mere ” existence, it is hard enough to grasp, for
as Ekai says in the Introduction to the Mumonkan, while we are fumbling
and hesitating, life like a race-horse has flashed past the window, (jRi|

MAIMS***')

l4 fcELIGiOtfS“ POETRY Ml

of God may take the forms that Stevenson describes in the fol¬
lowing lines:

Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take
And stab my spirit broad awake;

Or, Lord, if too obdurate I,

Choose Thou, before that spirit die,

A piercing pain, a killing sin,

And to my dead heart run them in!

The life of Zen is the God-kissed life.

There are one or two more specifically religious poems
worth noting in connection with Zen. The first verse of
Traherne’s Thoughts:

A delicate and tender thought
The quintessence is found of all He wrought;

It is the fruit of all his works,

Which we conceive,

Bring forth and give,

Yea, and in which the greater value lurks.

It is the fine and curious flower
Which we return and offer every hour;

So tender is our Paradise,

That in a trice

It withers straight and fades away.

If we but cease its beauty to display.

The word 11 thought ” here has, not the hard, intellectual con¬
notation, but the tender meaning of those momentary half-
timid, half-bold essays and flights of the soul towards some
ideal region. The universe flowers in us when we have such
thoughts. The aged Komachi, in Sotoba Komachi , says,

Though I too am a withered tree of no worth, my heart
has flowers, that may be offered to Buddha.

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262 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

These flowers of the soul are to be returned and offered every
hour, they are offerings before the altar of Reality. But, “so
tender is our Paradise,” that the flower that blooms in a
moment, will fade and wither in a moment. The identical
truth is expressed in the second chapter of the Rokusodankyo:

At every moment, in every place, if we are free from
foolish desires and act wisely, we have Wisdom (Paradise).
One foolish thought, and Paradise is lost; one wise thought
and salvation is again ours.

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The thought of the thing is far above the thing itself, in value.
Christ's thought of the lilies of the field transcended in beauty
that of the flowers themselves. Eckehart also says:

Das geringste Vermogen, dass es in meine Seele gibt,
ist weiter als der weite Himmel.

There is a poem of Matthew Arnold that I cannot forbear
quoting. Like Wordsworth’s We are Seven , it has not a “ poeti¬
cal” line in it, yet it is more affecting than many great poems.

EAST LONDON

’Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead
Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,

And the pale weaver, through his windows seen
In Spitalfields, looked thrice dispirited.

I met a preacher there I knew, and said:

‘Ill and o’erWorked, how fare you in this scene ? 9
‘Bravely! ’ said he; for I of late have been .

Much cheered by thoughts of Christ, the living breadJ

“RELIGIOUS" POETRY

263

0 himlan soul! so long as thou canst so

Set up a mark of everlasting light,

Above the howling senses’ ebb and flow,

To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam—

Not with lost toil thou labourest through the right!

Thou mak’st the heaven thou hop’st indeed thy home.

“Thoughts of Christ, the living Bread” ; these are the flowers
of the mind that grow in the squalour of Bethnal Green. All
the flowers that bloom in heaven have their roots here. God
is the root and God is the flower. God lives in us and blossoms
in us. This is the meaning (to jump back three centuries) of
the prayer of the Sarurn Primer:

God be in my head,

And in my understanding;

God be in mine eyes,

And in my looking;

God be in my mouth
And in my speaking;

God be in my heart
And in my thinking;

God be at my end
And at my departing.

This is a prayer for Zen.

Of all the poets, Milton seems farthest from Zen: religion
without pantheism, poetry without mysticism, interest in man¬
kind but none in men, seeing Nature as a picture, but no real
love of it as alive. This lack of Zen is connected closely with
his want of Christian charity, notorious unsatisfactoriness as
a husband and father, intolerant politics, and above all, his
pride, not to say arrogance. He never forgets himself, except
perhaps at the organ, where even his hard heart was “dissolved
into ecstasies.” God he seems to meet as an equal, as if he
realised that his poetry would reflect glory on the Creator. He

26t4 ZEN IN ENGLISH LlfEJRATURfi

has the impudence to attempt (and fail) “to justify the ways
of God to Man.” But there is another side to the question.
Milton says a poet “ought himself to be a true poem” (Apology
for Smeclymnus ), and Pope also,

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;

He can't be wrong whose life is in the right.

Milton belonged to both classes: he was a graceless zealot, but
his life was in the right. Zen takes a man as he is, and raises
him to his highest power. It does not necessarily improve his
morals, still less his intelligence. This is the point of Suzuki’s
bull-fighter. 1 Zen makes a bull-tighter a good bull-fighter, or
rather, it makes him a best bull-fighter, though not the best.
If such a man did Zazen and actually studied Zen under a
master, no doubt he would change bull-fighting for needle¬
work. But this would be an indirect result of Zen, in that for¬
getfulness of self implies sympathy, sympathy means universal
sympathy and therefore with bulls, who as far as possible
should be given a chance to live a natural life out on the
mountains — not teased to death in an enclosure to make a
Spanish holiday. Milton was like this bull-fighter, like his own
angel-fighter, Satan. Satan is full of Zen, because in him
Milton expresses the Zen which his actual life was full of:

Yet I argue not

Aga ; nst Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right on.

This reminds us of words spoken seven hundred years before,
at the Battle of Maldon:

Mind shall be the firmer, heart the keener,

Mood shall be the braver as our might lesseneth.

1 See Zen Buddhism and its Influence on Japanese Culture , page 90.

“RELIGIOUS* POETRY 266

This unreasonable, inverse proportion of might and mood, has
something of Zen in it. The well-known haiku of Bashb has
the same meaning:

Nothing in the voice of., the cicada
Intimates

How soon it will die.

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if we take it according to Prof. Suzuki's interpretation, 1 to*
mean that it does not “bate a jot of heart or hope”, but con¬
tinues to sing its best until the last moment of its life. Basho
also exemplified it in his life, every poem a death-poem.

This then is the Zen of Milton, of Satan:

To be weak is miserable,

Doing or suffering.

Active or passive, half-heartedness is misery, whole-hearted¬
ness, no-heartedness is bliss,

and in my choice

To reign is worth ambition, though in hell:

Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

Zen means to reign in hell and heaven.

A mind not to be chang'd by place and time.

The actions change according to circumstances but the mind
itself does not change in its nature. It is like water that takes
the shape of any vessel but remains water. This mind has a
unity, a wholeness, because it is like water, the same in every
part, though different in form and function. This kind of
mind, (that of the Grand Duke Charles Augustus) Goethe de¬
scribes to Eckermann (Thursday, Oct. 21,1828);

266 2EN M ENGLISH LITERATURE

Er war ein Mensch aus dem Ganzen, und es kam bet
ihm alles aus einer einzigen grossen Quelle. Und wie das
Ganze gut war, so war das Einzelne gut, er mochte thun
und treiben was er wollte.

Milton says further,

* The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

11 The mind is its own place,” that is, the mind has no locality
in space, it is not inside the skull of a certain person. We may
say, in the same way, “ The mind is its own time.” It is time¬
less, out of time, creates the time it lives in. Kanzan 1 says,

The years of a man’s life do not reach a hundred,

But his griefs are those of a thousand years.

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Look once more at the following lines:

Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?

Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell,

and compare them to

The water a cow drinks turns to milk;

The water a snake drinks turns to poison.

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Water is the same everywhere: everything depends on your¬
self as lo whether it shall become milk or poison, heaven or
hell. Again, in the 38th Case of the Hekiganroku , we have

1 Kanzan (3&|lj) was a monk of the To (Tang) dynasty, whose poems
were collected and published after his death by’Dogen of Kokusei-

ji (WjflH H

religious” Poetry

as?

To meet with ill fortune is to meet with good fortune.

To meet with submission is to meet with an enemy.

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The first line means that actually, ill fortune and good fortune

are only fortune: we make it ill or good ourselves. The second

\ ' *

line is Blake's

Bless relaxes, damn braces.

There is more Good in evil than in good, and we may say
a la Shinran Shonin, “ Even from good (good fortune), we can
get some Good,—how much more from evil (ill fortune)." 1 So
Satan says,

Our torments also may in length of them
Become our elements.

We create, uncreate, and recreate daily the world in which we
live, justifying Mephistophiles' words,

Am Ende hangen wir doch ab
Vom Creaturen die wir machten.

We are never to question the goodness of God, that is to say,
our innate ability to get the Good from our daily life. Not
music or art or poetry or Zen, but

to know

That which before us lies in daily life
Is the prime wisdom.

Then we shall neither curse God and die, nor justify his ways
to men:

1 What Shinran, (1173-1262) the founder of the Shin Sect of Bud¬
dhism, actually said, was, “Even good men will go to Paradise, let alone
he bad.” l *cife£*r l

268

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Accuse not Nature: she hath done her part;

Do thou but thine.

* Our attitude must be that expressed in:

»

Nor love thy life nor hate but what thou liv'st *

Live well; how long or short permit to heaven.

The lines quoted show Milton's natural Zen. Such a man,
like the 6th Patriarch, E-No, needs no master to teach him.
As the pine tree can grow on the rocks, so Milton could nourish
himself on a childish cosmology and maintain his soul on im¬
possible creeds. No wonder that we are drawn to Satan, and
feel no inspiration, no poetry, no life, no freedom, in God,
Christ, Michael, Adam and the rest, a rabble of Zen-less crea¬
tures wandering in a “cave of ghosts." From the point of
view of Zen we can appreciate deeply the last three lines of
Wordsworth's sonnet to Milton :

So didst thou travel on life’s common way,

In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did layT

There is another definition of Zen for you. Zen is cheerful
godliness, - we could almost say simply, Zen is cheerfulness,
for cheerfulness means reigning in Hell; godliness means
reigning in Heaven, not so difficult a thing.

The Pulley, of Heibert, may seem at first sight to have
little or no Zen in it; it appears to be a nice, slightly senti¬
mental Christian poem with no specially deep meaning. But
if we read it more sympathetically and try to teach the original
state of feeling from which the poem sprang, it then represents
something fundamental in human nature, namely, the desire
of the mind for real things; not for wisdom or honour, beauty
or strength, but for a complete knowledge of existence.

"RELIGIOUS*' POETRY m

When God at first made man,

Having a glasse of blessings standing by,

* Let us/ said He, ‘poure on him all we can;

Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,

Contract into a span/

So strength first made a way,

Then beautie flow'd, then wisdom, honour, pleasure;
When a most all was out, God made a stay,

Perceiving that, alone of all His treasure,

Rest in the bottome lay.

4 For if I should/ said He,

4 Bestow this jewell also on My creature,

He would adore my gifts instead of Me,

And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:

So both should losers be.

* Yet let him keep the rest,

But keep them with repining restlessnesse;

Let him be rich and wearie, that at least,

If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse

May tosse him to My breast/

What Herbert calls Nature, that is, music, art, poetry, virtue,
science,—these are not enough. The aim of the soul is not
Beauty, Goodness, Truth, but beatitude, a lively, peace, what
Herbert names 44 the breast of God/' 44 the God of Nature."
What man wants is things, all things, all things as One Thing,
a complete union of himself with that One Thing, with Life,
Reality, God. This condition of active rest is the state of Zen,
in which nothing is omitted, not the ugliest, filthiest, falsest,
most sinful thing; all is included in me and I in it. 44 Contract
into a .span,” is very good. All the glory and power of the
universe is contracted, concentrated, into a single thought, a
single emotion of one human being. 4 'So both should losers
pe/’ Not only man but God also loses by our restlessness.

270

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

This comes from the original identity of Man and God, para-
bolically shown in the Incarnation, but experienced, unnoticed,
every day by each one of us in his moments of corn-passion,
sym-pathy with persons, animals or things. The pun in the
first line of the last verse, (it is not accidental here) is worth
thinking about. This kind of pun, unnecessary and meaning¬
less to the thought of the poem itself, is at first only annoying,
but after a time, especially if one reads Japanese Vo plays in the
original, where they are continual and continuous, it begihs to
have a peculiar, inexplicable value, somehow suggesting to the
mind the underlying connection between all things, between
“shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings.”

The picture by Baen (Ma Yuan, Abifi) may be taken as an
illustration of the thought of Herbert’s poem. It is a picture
of a fisherman intent on his work among the rushing waves.
If we think that the work is arduous, that man faces the ele¬
ments with courage, this is morality. If we think of the spac¬
ing of the picture, this is beauty. If we think of the justness
of the drawing, this is truth. If we think of it as a symbol of
humanity and nature, man and the universe, this is religion.
But these, as Herbert says, are not enough. And if we think
of loneliness, or repose, or the Infinite, we are not thinki g of
the picture at all, we are thinking about ourselves, our own
emotions. We must look at the picture so that, what it ts
speaks so loudlv we cannot hear what it says. What the picture
is, gives us rest; so long as we do not think of the meaning,
we have the same active rest, resting activity, as the artist had
at the moment he painted the picture. We look at the picture,
the roaring of the waves in our ears, yet unheard; the rope
cutting our fingers and straining the muscles of the back, but
unnoticed; self-forgetful in intent labour; overhead, the grey
$ky, beneath, the grey waters, rocked with the motion of the

MAN FISHING, by Ba En.

Thou to mee

Art all things under heaven, all places thou.

fcgUGIOUS” POETRY

m

boat in the midst of the void,—all this in a timeless moment*
and afterwards, "Am I man Who dreamed he became a picture,
or a picture dreaming it is a man ? ”

Last, let me give Herbert’s \^ell-known The Collar:

I Struck the board, and cry’d, 4 No more;

I will abroad/

What, shall I ever sigh and pine?

My lines and life are free; free as the rode,

Loose as the winde, as large as store.

Shall I be still in suit?

Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me bloud, and not restore
What I have lost with cordiall fruit ?

Sure there was wine

Before my sighs did drie it: there was corn
Before my tears did drown it.

Is the yeare onely lost to me?

Have I no baye to crown it;

No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted,

All wasted?

Not so, my heart, but there is fi uii,

And thou hast hands.

Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures; leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit and not; forsake thy cage,

Thy rope of sands,

Which pettie thoughts have made; and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw
And be thy law,

While thou didst wink and would not see.

Away! take heed;

I will abroad,

Call in thy death’s-head there, tie up thy fears;

He that forbeais
To suit and serve his need
Deserves his load.

But as I rav’d and grew more fierce and wilde
At every word,

tn ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Me thought I heard one calling, ‘Childe’;

And I reply’d, * My Lord.’

This is the essence of all religion; the hardness of iron, the
softness of wool, the blueness of the distant, mountains, the
coldness of water,—it is the will of God, the will of Nature,
receive it without hesitation.

CHAPTER XVIII

NON-ATTACHMENT

PART I

This word suggests to an ordinary Englishman something
like the character of Harold Skimpole in Bleak House , a kind
of drone who tries to get all the honey of life with none of its
poison, the rose without the thorns. Mr. Skimpole explains
himself:

“ I covet nothing/' said Mr. Skimpole, in the same
light way. “Possession is nothing to me. Here is my
friend Jarndyce’s excellent house. I feel obliged to him
for possessing it. I can sketch it and alter it. I can set it
to music. When I am here, I have sufficient possession of
it, and have neither trouble, cost, nor responsibility."

This non-attachment comes from a deep, cold selfishness,
which avoids all love and sympathy because it may lead to
pain. There seems to have been more than a touch of this in
Goethe's attitude towards other people. Eckermann says,
speaking of himself, Sunday, May, 2, 1824, •

“ Und dann trage ich in die Gesellschaft gewdhnlich
meine personlichen Neigungen und Abneigungen und ein
gewisses Bediirfniss zu lieben und geliebt zu werden. Ich
suche eine Personlichkeit die meiner eigenen Natur gemass
sei; dieser mochte ich mich gern hingeben und mit den
andern nichts zu thun haben.”

This carrying into one's relations with other people likes
and dislikes, is to be avoided, and to desire to be loved is wrong

W ‘

274

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

however natural it may seem. But his desire to love, to be¬
stow affection and good upon another is beyond praise.
Goethe’s reply, however worldly wise, sounds calculating, as
though the aim of life were to receive only. There is nothing
we can disagree with, yet the heart rebels against it.

“Es ist eine grosse Thorheit, zu verlangen, dass die Men-
schen zu uns harmonieren sollen. Ich habe es nie gethan.
Ich habe einen Menschen immer nut* als ein fur sich be-
stehendes Individuum angesehen, dass ich zu erforschen
und dass ich in einer Eigentumlichkeit kennen zu lernen
trachtete, wovon ich aber durchaus keine weitere Sym-
pathie verlangte.”

It is too true to be good. Neither Buddha nor Christ were as
wise as this.

There is another kind of non-attachment similar to the
above, but based on the belief (which is itself again based on
the same cold-heartedness), that all the things of this world are
of no account compared with those of the next and that we
must set our minds entirely on things above. This cttn justify
itself equally from the Sutras and the Bible.

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the
world; if any man love the world the love of the Father is
not in him. And the world passeth away and the lust
thereof but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

( John , 2, 15.)

In the Hdkukyd ( Dhammapada ) we are told the same thing:
Love not anything:

Hate and envy arise from this same love.

He who loves nothing, hates nothing,

Is free from all evil bonds.

* L * 4* ^ A SI * » T £ 0

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NON-ATTACHMENT

275

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From love comes grief,

^ From love comes fear:

He who knows not love, knows no grief,

Free from love, he is free from fear.

m U ® Lliifcfcffl
36 L ® to

m L*«n* * l** g my

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The New Testament forbids us to love the world because
it is impermanent, the Sutra because it will be a cause of pain,
but we shall be making a fatal mistake if we are not careful
with the meaning of word “love,” in the Bible and in the
Buddhist scriptures. In the Bible, love means passionate self-
identification. In this way we are to understand the two great
commandments, “Love God and thy neighbour as thyself,”
and in this sense John’s injunction is plain: do not give your¬
self with passion to all those things which the world counts so
dear, money, position, fame, power, not to speak of the lower
and debasing pleasures. From the point of view of Zen, how¬
ever, we would interpret it rather differently and say: “ Love
the world, and love the things of the world, all of them with¬
out exception, but do not love them for the pleasure they give
you or hate them for the pain they bring you. That is to say,
love them without attachment.” In the Buddhist writings,
“ love ” means this attached love, it is the u love ” of “ the love
of money is the root of all evil.” It has, religiously speaking, a
bad meaning, it means attachment, bondage. When we think
of the worse side of the love of Nancy for Bill Sykes, of Dombey
for his son, of Jude for Sue, Alec, for Tess, Romeo for Juliet,
Lear for Cordelia, Hamlet for his mother, we can get some

276

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

idea of the meaning of “attachment.” “The worse side” does
not mean the physical as opposed to the spiritual: far from it.
It means the selfish, directly or indirectly self-seeking side, as
opposed to pure love, which means giving, not for the pleasure
of giving, like Mrs. Jellyby, but simple, thoughtless, instinctive
giving, like Mark Tapley’s, without reference to past, present
or future. In pure love (which no doubt does not exist at all
except in our imagination), the giver is not aware that he gives,
nor of what he gives, nor ‘to whom he gives, still less of
whether it is appreciated by the recipient or not. There is a
trinity here, a single action with the three parts undifferen¬
tiated in its activity. * To be without attachment does not mean
to look at things like a mirror or a camera. It means to look
at them as God looks at them. This is humorously and
graphically illustrated by Stevenson, in a fable called The Two
Matches .

One day there was a traveller in the woods in California,
in the dry season, when the Trades were blowing strong.
He had ridden a long way, and he was tired and hungry,
and dismounted from his horse to smoke a pipe. But when
he felt in his pocket he found but two matches. He struck
the first, and it would not light.

“ Here is a pretty state of things! ” said the traveller.
“Dying for asmoke; only one match left: and that certain
to miss fire! Was there ever a creature so unfortunate?
And yet,” thought the traveller, “suppose T light this
matchj and smoke my pipe, and shake out the dottle here
in the grass-the grass might catch on fire, for it is dry
like tinder; and while I snatch out the flames in front, they
might evade and run behind me, and seize upon yon bush
of poison oak; before I could reach it, that would have
blazed up; over the bush I see a pine tree hung with moss;
that too would fly in fire upon the instant to its topmost
bough; and the flame of that long torch—how would the
trade wind take and brandish that through the inflam-

NON-ATTACHMENT 477

mable forest ! I hear this dell roar in a moment with the
joint voice of wind and fire, I see myself gallop for my
soul, and the flying conflagration chase and out-flank me
through the hills; I see this pleasant forest burn for days,
and the cattle roasted, and the springs dried up, and the
farmer ruined, and his children cast upon the world. What
a world hangs upon this moment! ” With that he struck
the match, and it missed fire.

“ Thank God! ” said the traveller, and put his pipe in
his pocket.

The moral of this fable is not, of course, that we are to add
up the. pros and cons of each action, all the permutations and
combinations of possible contingencies, but that we are to
“ thank God ” for everything.

Receiving trouble is receiving grace:

Receiving happiness is receiving a trial.

* * & £ in & S in & afro m ti m

How are we to attain this state? By getting rid of our own
particular likes and dislikes, and being empty, yet “filled with
the spirit.” “When the half gods go,” that is when Mr. Blyth,
alias that fascinating girl, alias that odious old woman, alias
that filthy sink, goes, “the gods arrive”: the girl is still pretty,
the old woman still ugly, the sink still dirty, but there is a dif¬
ference. What is this difference? I have become like the
ghost in Hamlet; and the girl and the old woman and the sink
must say of me, like Marcellus of the ghost,

We do it wrong, being so majestical,

To offer it the show of violence.

For it is, as the air, invufnerable,

And our vain blows malicious mockery.

There is a story of two monks on a journey who came to

27$ 2eN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

a river with no bridge across it. As they were about to begin
to ford it, a young woman dame up. The first monk was just
going to offer to carry her across, when the second said to her,
“ Get on my back and I'll carry you over." She did so and
parted from them gracefully on the other side. After the two
monks had walked on for a few miles, the first monk, unable
to contain himself any longer, burst out, “ What did you mean
by carrying that girl across the river? You know monks are
allowed to have nothing to do with women!" The other said,
with a smile, “ You must be tired, carrying that girl all this
way. / put her down as soon as we got to the other side of
the river." Things*are beautiful but not desirable; ugly but
not repulsive; false, but not rejected; dirty, but ourselves no
cleaner.

The fallen flowers voluntarily (we suppose) float

away down the stream;

The flowing water receives them involuntarily
(we suppose) and carries them down the stream. 1

* O T m A \Z ffi Os

m 3l t n)

These two lines represent our arbitrary ascription of emotion
to nature. We fancy the flowers fall reluctantly; we think
the stream receives them coldly; but it is not so. The flowers
are not reluctant, they are not willing, the stream does not re¬
ceive them coldly or warmly. We too are to ba the same, but
are not to imitate the stream or the flowers, but be human be¬
ings in the same complete, vital way that the flowers blossom
and the stream flows. Though the self, the selfish self, must
disappear, emotion remains and this emotion is love. Here is

1 From ** a:'-/*** by FJ &&0

ROM-AttACtlMtNf S7$

both the meeting and the parting point of Zen and ordinary
Buddhism. Ordinary Buddhism teaches us to love all existing
things. Zen says,“ Get rid of the self and act from the Self! H
It is like the two sides of a mountain which, however separated
at the base, meet at the top. There is this difference also, that
the Zen side is short but exceedingly steep and difficult. The
ordinary Buddhist side is long, the slope gradual. Neverthe :
less they are the same in the end, for the nature of the universe
(that is, of the Self) is Good as taught in the Eki Kyo (IMS):

Active and Passive follow each other in the

Harmony of Goodness.

This in the justification, the basis, of the Auguries of In-
nocence . Everything is bathed in love like the ether. The
world is like* a spider's web; touch one part and the whole
quivers. So have,

Scoop up the water and the moon is in your hands;

Hold the flowers and your clothes are scented with them.

So Dickens, in Bleak House, speaking of the beggars and out¬
casts of the slums of London, whom he calls Tom:

But he has his revenge. Even the winds are his mes¬
sengers, and they serve lum in these hours of darkness.
There is not a drop of Tom's corrupted blood but propa¬
gates infection and contagion somewhere. It shall pollute,
this very night, the choice stream of a Norman house, and
his Grace shall not be able to say Nay to the infamous al¬
liance. There is not an atom of Tom's slime, not a cubic
inch ot any pestilential gas in which -he lives, not one
obscenity or degration about him, not an ignorance, not a
wickedness, not a ^brutality of his committing but shall

Sen IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

286

work its retribution, through every order of society up to
the proudest of the proud, and to the highest of the high.

(Chap. XLVI)

Dickens is also among the mystics, for this is Blake’s London:

How the chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black’nirig church appals;

And the hapless soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down palace walls.

And Dickens’ own profound sense of the love that moves the
sun and the other stars, that in his own breast was the light
of his life and work; he expresses in the famous lines at the
end of the next chapter, on Jo, the crossing sweeper’s death:

Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen.
Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every kind.
Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in
your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.

But this Heavenly compassion, that is the life of every
creature, this Goodness, unlike Dickens himself, has no senti¬
mentality. There is nothing miraculous, exceptional, lawless
about it. The Universe is Good as we manifest the nature of
water (and of our bodies), whether we float on it or drown in
it. What Zen wishes us to do is to let go of the ordinary good¬
ness of philanthropy and duty, and the badness of tyranny and
cruelty, and live always in this Goodness, dissolved in it, sub¬
limed in it. Zen says, as in the Shinjinmei, alliorms of dual¬
ism, right and wrong, good and bad, gain and loss—get rid of
them all, forget them!

This is good for me, that is bad for me, this is so, that
is not so,—we must be free from all such thoughts.

m & m

ATTACHMENT $81

In this, Zen shows (shall we say, betrays) its partial derivation
from R&shi. On this point Roshi is as paradoxical and violent
as Zen itself.

When the Way was not followed, arose goodness and virtue.

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Get rid of goodness, dispense with virtue, and people will
behave as they should, feel as they should.

r. *w m mm, i -m

The attitude of Zen is, Follow the Self, and all these things,
goodness, purity, compassion, will be* added unto you. That
is, do not attach yourself even to goodness, to ideals, to Zen it¬
self. Thus Roshi says of the Way (=Zen) in Chapter 34,

All things depend on It; It brings them into being, but
does not leave them in the lurch. It completes Its work,
but lays no claim to have done anything. It cherishes and
upholds all things, but does not behave as a master.

■a m m n xr * tfo n m z » n & m f m*

4io £ £ M ttu BB ^ IS yiio

Flow like the river, be firm as the rocks, pliant as the willow,
eternal as the sky, transitory as the dew-drops, for man is ail
these, and more..

There is a Korean poem by Rikeiho 1 He), concerning

this attachment to the Way, to Zen, to the Truth, that is, to

♦

the Moon:

Desiring to possess the moon,

A monk once ladled it out with the water into a vessel,

But, reaching the temple with it, found

That when he poured the water out, the moon was gone.

1 See page 256.

282 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

One of Issa’s haiku has the same thought:

Whose is it then,

My children,

This red, red moon ?

In the Kongo Kyo it is expressed in a less picturesque but more
unmistakable way:

Buddha asked, “ Subodai. What do you think about this:
has the Buddha attained to Perfect Enlightenment? Is
there any Truth for him to teach ?” Subodai answered,
“According to the teaching of the Buddha, the World-
Honoured One, there is nothing we can call Perfect En¬
lightenment, neither is there any Truth for the Buddha to
teach. Why not ? Because we are not to adhere to the
teaching of the Buddha, nor is it to be taught.”

m ftaucMo raw» *
m in * m m » m w, m r? h c nt in « m
m w ft as # & m « w w * m h #& s #

# M Hi >U 2fc in Mi nf iifeo M W itto Sii ^ W lift ifeo
ff Mi An 3ft 0 fi'J Jit flfc> An ft Hi 0

S «/ Jft, »r fto («s -fc *)

In the Bible, both the New and the Old Testament, there
is not much talk of freedom or bondage, except in regard to
sin. Christ says,

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Everyone that committeth
sin, is the bondservant of sin.

But are there not also the bondservants of goodness, slaves of
ideals, those who ruin themselves and others for the sake of
one or another of the virtues ? Othello was the bondservant
of purity (but “ To the pure all things are pure ”); Hamlet, of

1 in unworn**®* rm*

NON-ATTACHMENT

263

justice (but “Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord, I will repay”);
Lear, of simple love 1 (but “ Love covereth a multitude of sins”).
For this reason we are told, in Zen,

If you meet a Buddha, kill Jiim!

If you meet Daruma or any other great master, kill him!

m n 0fh MMo

Christ has the same feeling:

If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother
and wife and children and bretheren and sisters, yea, and
his own life also, he cannot be my disciple,

but he does not universalise it as Zen does to include all things,
even God himself. That is to say, there is in the Bible no ac¬
tual meditation on what we may call absolute freedom; there
is a kind of tacit assumption that God could not, for example,
tell a lie. There are one or two passages, it is true, in the Old
Testament, which point towards this absolute freedom, a real
omnipotence of God, but they seem quite out of the current of
Jewish thought. We have in Amos III, 6,

Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not
be afraid ? Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath
not done it?

and in Isaiah XLV, 6, 7,

I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and
create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the
Lord do all these things.

Orthodox commentators struggle desperately with this verse;

some say that “evil” here means “calamity.” But to bring
»

1 Though knaves flatter, we are not, like Cordelia, to refrain from
praising, even in chorus with them.

284 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

calamity upon human beings too ignorant, too weak to extract
the good from it, makes God a cause of useless cruelty, and
what else is evil ? Some say that this is a declaration of the
fact that Jehovah combines the attributes of Ahuramazda and
Ahriman in the dualistic systeift of Zbroaster. This is better,
but why not interpret it in the light of Habakkuk 1, 13,

Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil,

where God transcends both good and evil, for God cannot
see good and evil, but only Good.

In Wordsworth we often find attachment to goodness:

Yea, to this hour I cannot read a tale
Of two brave vessels matched in deadly fight
And fighting to the death, but I am pleased,

More than a wise man ought to be.

(Recluse: 721-4)

but in Nietzsche we find, equally often, attachment to the idea
of non goodness:

Der Krieg und der Mut haben mehr grosse Dinge getan
als die Nachstenliebe.

However, in the same chapter we hear the true voice of
Zen:

Ihr sagt, die gute Sache sei es, die sogar den Krieg heilige?
Iche sage euch: der gute Krieg ist es, der jede Sache heiligt,

and in Wordsworth also, when he speaks of anguish and death,
(. Excursion, I, 921-4):

I stood, and leaning o’er the garden wall
Reviewed that Woman’s sufferings: and it seemed
To comfort me while with a brother’s love
I blessed her in the impotence of grief*

CHAPTER XIX

NON-ATTACHMENT

PART II

The attitude of Christ towards the problem of freedom is
utterly different from that of all the rest of the Bible. This
attitude is expressed more implicitly than explicitly, and partly
for this very indirectness, we feel in another world, the world
of the spirit, where

Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage.

Nevertheless there are three passages that express superlatively
the nature of freedom, and we will take them in this and the
succeeding t\yo chapters. First,

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

“ Judge not” means, “Do not allow your judgements to be
static: be like water that ‘judges’ the shape of every vessel
into which it is poured but does not lose its nature, its fluidity
and mobility.” Judge as bad but do not reject. Shakespeare
says of the pimp, the most despicable of all the creatures in
the universe,

Truly, sir, I am a poor fellow that would live.

Judge as good but do not desire. This is illustrated by one of
Wordsworth's poems, Two April Mornings, woefully misinter¬
preted by Lafcadio Hearn, because he did not understand Zen.
Here is the poem:

286

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

TWO APRIL MORNINGS

We walked along, while bright and red
Uprose the morning sun;

And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said,
“The will of God be clone! ”

A village schoolmaster was he,

With hair of glittering grey;

As blithe a man as you could see
On a spring holiday.

And on that morning, through the grass,
And by the steaming rills,

We travelled merilly, to pass
A day among the hills.

“ Our work” said I, “was well begun,

Then from thy breast what thought,
Beneath so beautiful a sun,

So sad a sigh has brought?”

A second time did Matthew stop;

And fixing still his eye
Upon the eastern mountain-top,

Tt» me he made reply,

“ Yon cloud with that long purple cleft
Brings fresh into my mind
A day which I have left
Full thirty years behind.

“ And just above yon slope of corn
Such colours, and no other.

Were in the sky, that April morn,

Of this the very brother.

“ With rod and line I sued the sport
Which that sweet season gave,

And, to the churchyard come, stopped short
Beside my daughter’s grave.

NON-ATTACHMENT II

4S?

“Nine summers had she scarcely seen,

The pride of all the vale;

And then she sang; she would have been
A very nightingale.

“Six feet in earth my Emma lay;

And yet I loved her more,

For so it seemed, than till that day
I e’er had loved before.

“And turning from her grave, I met,

Beside the churchyard yew,

A blooming Girl, whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew.

“ A basket on her head she bare;

Her brow was smooth and white;

To see a child so very fair,

It was a pure delight!

“ No fountain from its rocky cave
E’er tripped with foot so free;

She seemed as happy as a wave
That dances on the sea.

“There came from me a sigh of pain
Which I could ill confine;

I looked at her and looked again:

And did not wish her mine /"

Matthew is in his grave, yet now,,

Methinks I see him stand,

As at that moment, with a bough
Of wilding in his hand.

Why did he not wish her his? Lafcadio Hearn explains,
that first, no person can take the place of a dead child; second,
the new person would be a reminder of the former; third,

«

it would be a sbrt of unkindness to the dead to allow any
living person to take the empty place.

288

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Such sentimental and superstitious explanations are indeed
far from the truth, but typ cal of Hearn, who, except for,the
macabre and horrible, cheapens everything he touches Mat¬
thew gives the reason himself in the fourth verse fiom the
end

It was a pure delight,

or rather, a purified delight He did not wish her his because
he had gone beyond the possessive stage of love, and towards
his own daughtei he had this same love, purified by gnef He
did not wish her his, and he did not wish his own daughter
his,- only pure love tor the dead girl and puie delight in the
living When you love one person properly, you love all If
you leally love your own dog, you love all dogs, all living
creatures This is the same truth that Detective Bucket tel’s
1 sther about the pretended non attachment of Mr Skimpole,
so devoted to the pleasures of life, and adds the following
rule, which may justly be called a rule of Zen

“ Tast and loose in one thing, Fast and loose in everything
I nevei knew it fail No more will you Nor no one ”

Lack of desne in one (desirable) thing, lacl of desire in all
Lack of judging in one thing, lack of judging in all. Judge as
good, as beautiful, but do not wish it youis

Precisely the same thought is expressed in The Fountain:

“ And Matthew, for thy children dead
I'll be a son to thee f ”

At this he grasped my hand, and said,

“ Alas* that cannot be.”

So*Bash6 sa>s, tealismg like Matthew the eternal Nature of
things,

NON-ATTACHMENT II 289

The morning-glory!

But this too

Can never be my friend.

44 Judge not;” why not ? Because there is no judge, no criminal,
no crime. This is the teaching of the Kongo Kyo :

1. These (those who are enlightened) have no (false) idea
of an ego, an individual, a being, a soul.

#?• (# * w

2. Cherish thoughts that are dwelling on nothing what¬
ever. 1

m m fft tfc bs £ & '!>• (m + *>

“Dwelling on nothing,” means there is nothing to judge. We
cannot judge the stream; it wili not appear in court, it is too
busy flowing.

What is the meaning of 44 that ye be not judged ” ? If you
reject things, they will reject you. If you Cling obstinately to
things, things will cling obstinately to you. If you are an
enemy of Nature, Nature is your enemy. If you divide the
world into two, you will be nipped between the two, as in a
pair of nut-crackers.

Loving and loathing; accepting and rejecting; grasping

1 There are many translations of this famous line: the one given
above is Suzuki’s in his Manual of Zen Buddhism . Others are:

1. Awaken one’s thoughts where there is no abode whatever, (also

Suzuki's.)

2. We should use a mind dwelling upon Nothing.

3. One should U9e one's mind in such a way that it Will be free from

attachment

4. Awaken the mind without fixing it anywhere.

5. Use the mental faculties spontaneously and naturally, but uncon¬

strained by any preconceptions arising from the senses.

290

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

and disdaining; longing and spurning; this is the disease
of the mind.

(It *)

The opening line of this poem of Sosan says the same thing:

The Way of Perfection is riot difficult; only, it does not
like choosing.

Christ also says it, but more violently :

Whoever shall say, ‘Thou fool!\ shall be in danger of hell
fire. .

(Or as Zen would express it, “ is in hell fire.”)

We are told to avoid this attitude. But how is it possible,
when we are choosing (pleasure, comfort, wisdom,, goodness
etc.) every moment of the day.? No one chooses pain, unless
to gain some greater bliss with it. If we are cold we choose
a fire, if our leg itches we choose to scratch it. Would not the
cessation of choosing mean the cessation of Lfe itself? To
answer this we must first consider the question. What is re¬
ligion? or to put it more concretely, what is a man's religion ?
A man's religion is what he thinks about his relation to the
universe; or rather, it is what he feels about this relation; or
better, it is what he does about this relation; or best, it is how
he acts. The style is the man. Spenser says in Book 2 of the
Faerie Queene,

For a man by nothing is so well bewrayed
As by his manners,

and Emerson,

The greater man, the greater courtesy.

Thus we see that the all important thing is not, killing or

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291

giving life, drinking or not drinking, living in the town or the
country, being lucky or unlucky, winning or losing. It is how
we win, hoiv we lose, how we live or die, finally, how we choose .
We all do the same things, eating, drinking, getting up, going
to bed, avoiding pain, pursuing pleasure. We walk, and our
religion is shown (even to the dullest and most insensitive per¬
son), in how we walk. Or to put it more accurately, living in
this world means choosing, choosing to walk, and the way we
choose to walk is infallibly and perfectly expressed in the
walking itself. Nothing can disguise it. The walk of an
ordinary man and of an enlightened man are as different as
that of a snake and a giraffe. What is the difference? We
may express it briefly, though not very intelligibly, by saying
it is a question of balance; the one has it, the other noC This
“balance” is Johnson’s “life led according to Nature,” it is
the manner an enlightened person acts in those particular
circumstances. We can feel it by experience, see it in others,
or guess at it by natural analogies:

The mirror reflects the tapers of the golden pavilion;

The mountain echoes the bell of the moon-tower.

(»#**)

AT THE SEA-SIDE

When I was down beside the sea,

A wooden spade they gave to me
To dig the sandy shore.

My holes were empty like a cup,

In every hole the sea came up,

Till it could come no more.

This, from Stevenson’s A Child's Garden mf Verses, expresses
that inevitability (another word for “balance”), which is the

292 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

essence of all music, poetry and art, and also the art of living.
Christ says,

Be ye perfect, even as your Father is perfect,

for balance, inevitability, perfection, are convertible terms and
are to be applied, not, like moral and aesthetic judgements, to
one aspect of the case but to the whole,— to the person,
circumstances, action, cause, effect. All these become a unity
when the person makes them so by his own internal unity.
This is expressed by Stevenson in the last line of the Whole
Duty of Children:

A child should always say what's true,

And speak when he is spoken to,

And behave mannerly at table:

At least as far as he is able.

This does not imply weakness or imperfection in his words
and actions. The first three lines mean, “Be perfect"; the
last line, that he is not to attach himself to some impossible,
ideaf, unreal mode of behaviour. It is only a bad carpenter
who blames his tools. A good carpenter is not attached to
them: he can be a perfect carpenter with a few rusty nails and
a blunt chisel. We are to be like Mr. Carker, the villain of
Dombey and Son;

He did each single thing as if he did nothing else.

This non-moral, a-moral njanner of living is illustrated in a
fable of Stevenson called Faith, Half-faith, and No Faith At
AIL Faith, the priest, is the man who believes, or pretends to
believe, in revealed religion, revealed to a certain number of
people at a certain time and place. Dante is the greatest ex¬
positor of this kind of belief. Half-faith, the virtuous person,

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«3

is the man who talks about Goodness, Beauty, Truth, with
capital letters, who says that all religions are true. Many
Buddhists and most scientists belong to this class. No-Faith,
the rover, is the man who lives by Zen.

In the ancient days there went three men upon pil¬
grimage ; one was a priest, and one was a virtuous person,
and the third was an old rover with his axe.

As they went, the priest spoke about the grounds of
faith.

“ We find the proofs of our religion in the works of
nature/’ said he, and beat his breast.

“ That is true,” said the virtuous person.

“ The peacock has a scrannel voice,” said the priest,

“ as has been laid down always in our books. How cheer¬
ing ! ” he cried, in a voice like one that wept. “ How com¬
forting ! ”

“I require no such proofs,” said the virtuous person.

“ Then -you have no reasonable faith,” said the priest.

“Great is the right, and shall prevail!” cried the
virtuous person. “There is loyalty in my soul; be sure,
there is loyalty in the mind of Odin.”

“These are but playings upon words,” returned the
priest. ‘ f A sackful of such trash is nothing to the pea¬
cock.”

Just then they passed a country farm, where there
was a peacock "sealed on a rail; and the bird opened its
mouth and sang with the voice of a nightingale.

“ Where are you now ? ” asked the virtuous person.

“ And yet this shakes not me! Great is the truth, and
shall prevail! ”

“ The devil fly away with that peacock! ” said the
priest; and he was downcast for a mile or two.

But presently they came to a shrine, where a Fakeer
performed miracles.

“Ah!” said the priest, “here are the true grounds of
faith. The peacock was but an adminicle. This is the
base of our religion.” And he beat upon his breast, and
groaned like one with colic.

294 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

“Now to me/’ said the virtuous person, “all this is as
litUe to the purpose as the peacock. I believe because I
see the right is greater and must prevail; and this Fakeer
might carry on with his conjuring tricks till doomsday,
and it would not play bluff upon a man like me.”

Now at this the Fakeer was so much incensed that his
hand trembled; and, lo! in the midst of a miracle the
cards fell from up his sleeve.

“Where are you now?” asked the virtuous person.

“ And yet it shakes not me! ”

“The devil fly away with the Fakeer!” cried the
priest “I really do not see the good of going on with
this pilgrimage.”

“Cheer up!” cried the virtuous person. “Great is
the right, and shall prevail! ”

“If you are quite sure it will prevail,” says the priest.

“ I pledge my word for that,” said the virtuous person.

So the other began to go on again with a better heart.

At last one came running, and told them all was lost:
that the powers of darkness had besieged the Heavenly
Mansions, that Odin was to die, and evil triumph.

“I have been grossly deceived,” cried the virtuous
person.

“ All is lost now,” said the priest.-

“I wonder if it is too late to mate it up with the
devil ? ” said the virtbous person.

“ Oh, I hope not,” said the priest. “ And at any rate
we can but try. But what are you doing with your axe? ”
says he to the rover.

“I am off to die with Odin,” said the rover.

Odin is the “That,” the Nature of things, of the 29th Case of
th ejlekiganroku:

A monk said to Daizui, “In the Age of Fire, every¬
thing in the Universe will be destroyed by Fire. Will
“That” (the Buddha-nature of all things, the Nature of
the Universe) be annihilated or not?” Daizui answered,

“ It will be annihilated! ”

NON-ATTACHMENT II 29 $ .

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So we are not to be attached to Goodness or Beauty or Truth,
nor to Odin, to Reality, to the Absolute, to Zen. We are to
live with life and be annihilated with annihilation:

He who bends to himself a Joy,

Doth the winged life destroy;

But he who kisses the Joy as it flies,

Lives in eternity’s sunrise.

And Emily Dickinson, even nearer to Daizui than Blake,

In insecurity to lie
Is joy’s insuring quality.

The misery (often disguised as happiness) that comes from
attachment, is marked on every face; it is the theme of novels
dramas, poetry.* Attachment is “the root of all evil.”. The
condition of the “ attached ” man is described by Spenser (re*
cording his own experiences in the English cottrt,) in Mother
Hubbard's Tale:

To lose good dayes, that might be better spent;

To wast long nights in pensive discontent;

To speed today, to be put back tomorrow;

To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow.

Another aspect is described by Shakespeare in King John .
Constance is speaking of her son Arthur:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

Lies in his bed, walks tip and down with me.

Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.

King Philip rightly says,

296 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

You are as fond of grief as of your child,

that is to say, as fonckof yourself, of your own emotions, as of
your son. This is the tragedy of Mr. Dombey, in Dombey and
Son, of whom Dickens says,

For all his starched, impenetrable dignity and composure,
he wiped blinding tears from his eyes; and often said, with
an emotion of which he would not for the world, have had
a witness, “ Poor little fellow! ”

It may have been characteristic of Mr. Dombey's pride,
that he pitied himself through the child.

Othello is one of *the greatest examples of this kind of at¬
tachment (to oneself disguised as another person,) for in Othello
himself it is exacerbated by the poetical faculty, the imagina¬
tion, which is th£ greatness of Othello. The trouble is that
Othello does not “ regulate his imagination by reality ”:

I had rather be a toad,

And live upon the vapours of a dungeon.

Than keep a corner of the thing I love
For others* uses.

This idea of complete, ideal, unshared possession of Desdemona
is an impossible one:

For none of us lives unto himself, and no man dieth to
himself.

For whether we live,, we live unto the Lord; and
whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live
therefore, or die, we are the Lord's.

But this ideal attachment he has made the whole motive force
of his existence,

But there, where I have garner'd up my heart,

Where either I must live, or bear no life,—

NON-ATTACHMENT II

297

Without it, life is meaningless, it stagnates.

O, now for ever

Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content,

Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars,

That make ambition virtue! O farewell!

Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,

The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing life,

The royal banner, and all quality,

Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war!

And, O you mortal engines, whose rude throats
The immortal Jove’s dread clamours counterfeit,
Farewell! Othello’s occupation’s gone!

It was this condition that Confucius had in mind when he
said:

The Superior Man is not a utensil,

7 * Fd > m 7* 7 m tU T ~o)

which is capable of one use only. This stagnation of life is
the real tragedy of this world, for it is the waste of life. There
are many tragic forms. In the play of Othello we have the
three types, Iago, Desdemona, Othello. Iago is the tragedy of
the exercise of (intellectual) power heedless of reality; Desde¬
mona, of unmerited anguish; Othello, of the damming of a
life by a spurious imagination, by judging , by separating him¬
self from the (supposed) sinner, and condemning her. Zen
sets out to help men to avoid this last kind of tragedy. To
Zen the tragic figure of the Gospels is not Christ, nor the
Roman soldiers who crucified him, nor Mary the mother of
Christ weeping before the cross, but the disciples, as exemplified
in Peter and his three denials, Pontius Pilate and his lying
question, “ What is truth? ” (One can lie in a question just as
much as in an answer ) Othello does not, cannot, understand
what the Duke^ays in his presence:

298

ZEN IN' ENGLISH LITERATURE!

What cannot be preserved when fortune takes,

Patience her injury a mockery makes.

The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief.

This was Ryokan’s attitude when a thief broke into the house.

The thief

Left it behind—

The moon at the window.

Ci 9) 0 ) z. 3 it LSfi© ft

Ryokan stole the moon from the thief, and smiled in seventeen
syllables. In Othello this disease of possession is so acute that
it can be cured only by killing the patient. It is of the greatest
importance to notice that this disease of attachment could not
be cured, and in fact, is not cured, by his discovery of Desde-
mona’s innocence and faithfulness. We may learn as we
watch the tragedy unfold, but the hero himself, learns nothing.
This is true also of Antony, Hamlet, and Macbeth.

In complete contrast to Othello with his “love” of Desde-
mona,

Damn her, lewd minx! O, damn her! .

Come, go with me apart; I will withdraw
To furnish me with some swift means of death
For the fair devil,

we have the words of Lovelace:

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my love am free,

Angels alone that soar above
Lnjoy such liberty.

Freedom does not mean some kind of absolute pure freedom
in a vacuum. It does not mean spiritual freedom in material
bondage. It means an activity of the mind, that is, of the soul,

NON-ATTACHMENT II

2m

that is, of the body, at all times and in all places, which is in
accordance with its own nature and with that of the circum¬
stances. This is what Johnson speaks of in Rasselas ,

the simple and intelligible maxim, — that deviation from
nature is deviation from happiness.

To live according to nature, is to act always with due re¬
gard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities
of causes and effects; to concur with the great and un¬
changeable scheme of universal felicity; to co-operate
with the general disposition and tendency of the present
system of tilings.

Though Johnson is here making fun of these vague abstrac¬
tions, we find him, in Boswell’s Life of Johnson , endorsing this
attitude in his own prrson.

When I, in a low-spirited lit, was talking to him with in¬
difference of the pursuits which generally engage us in a
course of action and enquiring a reason for taking so much
trouble, “Sir,” said he in an animated tone, “it is driving
on the system of life.”

This “driving on the system of life,” this “co-operation with
the general disposition and tendency of the present system of
things,” is thus expressed in the SaikontanJ

Fishes sv^im in the water, but do not think of it; birds fly
in the wind, but are not aware of it.

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Fear or hatred (they are almost inseparable,) of the world
is a form of attachment to it. It is commoner than generally
suspected, found, to some extent, in the hearts of everyone of
us. The following anecdote, probably imaginary, was written

1 IK39, literally, vegetable roots talkings, that is, Meditations of a
Simple Lifer, by Kojisei, (1575-1619) a man who blended Taoism, Con¬
fucianism and Buddhism into a spiritual unity of outlook on the world.

300 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

by Kulsugen himself (about 1000 years before the To (Tang)
era.) Giles has translated this in Gems of Chinese Literature ,
Prose, page 34, in some places simplifying, in other places over-
elaborating it

When Kutsugen was dismissed from office he went to
Kotan, and sat sighing by the river. He lo >ked like a
skeleton, so pale and emaciated was he. A fisherman,
seeing him there, said to him, “Are you not the Prime
Minister? What may you be doing here? ”

Kutsugen replied, “ The whole world is filthy; I alone
am clean. Everybody is drunk; I alone am sober. This
is the reason I was dismissed.” The fisherman said, “ A
sage is not bound to things, is not the slave of circum¬
stances, but follows them, acts in accordance with them.

If the whole world is? filthy, you must jump in the muddy
water and splash about in it. If all men are drunk, drink
with them. What is the good of meditating so profoundly
and idealistically?” Kutsugen said, “I have heard that
when a man has washed himself he dusts his hat, and
when a man has bathed his body, he shakes his clothes.
How can he who has purified himself put on his old dirty
clothes again? I would rather jump in this river and feed
my body to the fishes. I will not allow my purity to be
sullied by the defilements of this world! ”

The smiling fisherman gave a chuckle, and rowed
away; he sang, keeping time with his oar,

“If the water of Soro is clear, I will

wash the ribbon of my hat;

If it is dirty, I will wash my feet in it.”

This was all he said, and was gone.

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The real point of the story lies in the fact that Kutsugeu after¬
wards drowned himself because he could not regain office.
The physician did not take his own medicine. Those who
speak do not (necessarily) know; those who know cannot
(always) speak. Mere head knowledge of Zen is as useless as
medicine in a bottle, or the stable door after the horse has run
out.

Attachment means asking for something, asking, not with
the mouth but 'with the inmost heart. The following story
illustrates this point. All my life I wanted a friend, and I
thought I had found one at last in a monk of the Myoshinji,
Keijo, Korea. Overjoyed with this thought, I went one day to
the temple, but he treated me quite coolly, just like anybody
else, and I went home quite wretched, feeling 1 did not want
a friend anyhow, (sour grapes). That evening he came to the
house and I told him what had happened and how I had felt.
With a malicious twinkle in his black eyes he said, “ That's
because you wanted something from me!” (•& ft(£ 7 7 i X
3 /v (£\Z ab h *i> 1f k foh±i't>) The same idea is expressed
in a poem of Hakurakuten;

WATCHING FISH AT PLAY

As I wandered round the lake and gazed at the fishes

gliding to and fro,

302 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

I came across some boys fishing in a boat.

Both they and I loved the fish,—but our state of mind

was different:

I had come to feed the fish, they to catch them,

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The boys wanted to get something from the fish, Hakurakuten
wanted to give something to them. It may be objected that
both the boys and the poet wanted something, the boys the
fish themselves and the poet the sight of their beauty; that

what they received was the material, and he the spiritual.

This is not so. The boys were concerned with profit and loss,'
fish and no fish, big, juicy fish, and skinny, bony fish. ‘ The
poet was in that condition which Baslio described in an already
quoted poem:

Unseen today

In misty showers, and yet

Today, how beautiful, Mt. Fuji! 1

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If this were written

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“ when unseen «/s 0 , on a misty, showery day,” all the spiritual
meaning would disappear, destroyed by the introduction of the
comparative element. The cherry flowers bloom and the poet

1 This is the real meaning of Unmon's
Every day is a good day,

h ri & if n

that is, every day is a Good day.

NON*ATTACHMENT II

^ 303

receives their beauty into his heart. But when they fall, he
sees them fall without regret, for he does not ask them to
bloom and does not ask them not to fall. So with Hakuraku-
ten; he watched the fish as God watches them and all things,
he watched them as another poet who said,

Beneath a dome of fallen rock,

That in the current looms,

The fishes glide, like birds at night,

In colder, greener, glooms.

And there, in darkest mystery,

With slow expressive grace,

They move in rhythmic line and curve
Within that holy place.

O joyful dance in shadows dim!

O rock of sombre hue!

O coiling wave and curling stream.

Ever the same yet new!

CHAPTER XX

NON-ATTACHMENT

PART III

The truth shall make you free.

In Othello the Duke says:

When remedies are past, the griefs are ended
By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended. 1
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone
Is the next way to draw new mischief on.

What is the worst ? Sin, suffering, death. If only we can be
lifted up by these waves, instead of being submerged by them,
we shall be free. Free from what? Free from the illusion
that we are not free. Our illusions that we are not (now) free,
are our hopes. Our hopes, for a better condition than we are
now in, are not only the cause of grief, but the grief itself.
There is a story of Roshi, who was riding towards a city with
an attendant. Seeing the city in the distance, the attendant
spurred on his horse. Roshi called him back, saying “ Here
also it is good,” and rode steadily on. Dr. Johnson in Rasselas
has the same thought.

If you are pleased with the prognostics of good, you
will be terrified likewise with tokens of evil. (Chap. XIII) ,

Looking forward always is a form of superstition, an attach¬
ment to the future; whatever we have, to want more, where-

1 “ Which late on hopes depended/’ qualifies “ griefs.”

804

NON-ATTACHMENT III 305

ever we are, to wish to be somewhere else, as Ruskin says.
And Browne, in Love's Labours Lost , states,

At Christmas I no more desire a rose,

Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth*

This must be our fundamental state of mind every moment of
the day. But of all things in this world, this love of truth is
the most uncommon. Long ago Confucius said,

I have never seen a man who loved virtue as much as he
loved beauty, n

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and

I have never seen a man able to perceive his own faults,
and inwardly reproach himself.

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As Blake says in the Proverbs of Hell ,

The fox condemns the trap, not himself.

We condemn the universe for being what it is but

God’s in his Heaven,

All’s right with the world

even though it seems full of traps for the wary as well as for
the unwary. There is a fable of Stevenson which portrays the
man who will sell all that he has to gain the pearl of great
price, who will Ipse his life to gain it, illustrating the fact that
non-attachment is the condition of attaining to the truth, that
Freedom shall make you true .

306

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

THE TOUCHSTONE

The King was a man that stood well before the world;
his smile was sweet as clover, but his soul withinsides was
as little as a pea. He had two sons; and the younger son
was a boy after his heart, but the elder was one whom he
feared. It befell one morning that the drum sounded in
the dun before it was yet day; and the King rode with his
two sons, and a brave array behind them. They rode two
hours, and came to the foot of a brown mountain that was
very steep.

“ Where do we ride ? ” said the elder son.

“Across this brown mountain, 1 ” said the King, and
smiled to himself.

“ My father knows what he is doing,” said the younger

son.

And they rode two hours more, and came-to the sides
of a black river that was wondrous deep.

“ And where do we ride ? ” asked' the elder son.

“ Over this black river,” said the King, and smiled to
himself.

“ My father knows what he is doing/’ said the younger

son.

And they rode all that day, and about the time of the
sunsetting came to the side of a lake, where was a great
dun.

“It is here we ride/’ said the King; “to a King’s
house, and a priest’s, and a house where you will learn
much/’

At the gates of the dun, the King who was a priest
met them; and he was a grave man, and beside him stood
his daughter, and she was as fair as the morn, and one
that smiled and looked down.

“ These are my two sons,” said the first King.

*' And here is my daughter,” said the King who was a
priest.

“She is a wonderful fine maid,” said the first King,
“and I like her manner of smiling.”

“They are wonderful well-grown lads,” said the

NG$‘ATTACHMENT III

307

second, “and Mike their gravity.”

And then the two Kings looked at each other, and
said^ “ The thing may come about.”

And in the meanwhile the two lads looked upon the
maid, and the one grew pale and the other red; and the
maid looked upon the ground smiling.

“ Here is the maid that I shall marry,” said the elder.

“ For I think she smiled upon me.”

But the younger plucked his father by the sleeve.

“ Father,” said he, “ a word in your ear. If I find favour
in your sight, might not I wed this maid, for I think she
smiles upon me ? ”

“ A word in yours,” said the King his father. “ Wait¬
ing is good hunting, and when the teeth are shut the
tongue is at home.”

Now they were come into the dun, and feasted; and
this was a great house, so that the .lads were astonished;
and the King that was a priest sat at the end of the board
and was silent, so that the lads were filled with reverence;
and the maid served them smiling with downcast eyes, so
that their hearts were enlarged.

Before it was day, the elder son arose, and he found
the maid at her weaving, for she was a diligent girl.

“ Maid,” quoth he, “ I would faith marry you.”

“You must speak with my father,” said she, and she
looked upon the ground smiling, and became like the rose.

“Her heart is with me,” said the elder son, and he *
went down to the lake and sang.

A little after came the younger son. “ Maid,” quoth
he, “if our fathers were agreed, I would like well to marry
you.”

“You can speak to my father,” said she; and looked
upon the ground, and smiled and grew like the rose.

“She is a dutiful daughter,” said the younger son,
“she will make an obedient wife.” And then he thought,
“What shall I do?” and he remembered the King her
father was a priest; so he went into the temple, and
sacrificed a weasel and a hare.

Presently the news got about; and the two lads and

308

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

the first King were called into the presence of the King
who was a priest, where he sat upon the high seat.

44 Little I reck of gear,” said the King who was a priest,
44 and little of po .ver. For we live here among the shadow
of things, and the heart is sick of seeing them. And we
stay here in the wind like raiment drying, and the heart is
weary of the wind. But one thing I love, and that is cruth;
and for one thing will I give my daughter, and that is the
trial stone. For in the light of that stone the seeming
goes, and the being shows, and all things besides are
worthless. Therefore, lads, if ye would wed my daughter,
out foot, and bring me the stone of touch, for that is the
price of her,”

“A word iu your ear,” said the younger son to his
father. “ I think we do very well without this stone.”

“A word in yours,” said the father. “I am of your
way of thinking; but when the teeth are shut the tongue
is at home.” And he smiled to the King that was a priest.

But the elder son got to his feet, and called the King
that was a priest by the name of father.

44 For whether I marry the maid or no, I will call you
by that word for the love of your wisdom; and even now I
will ride forth and search the world for the stone of touch.”
So he said farewell, and rode into the world.

44 1 think I will go, too,” said the younger son, 44 if I
can have your leave. For my heart goes out to the maid.”

44 You will ride home with me,” said his father.

So they rode home, and when they came to the dun,
the King had his son into his treasury. 44 Here,” said he,
44 is the touchstone which shows truth; for there is no
truth but plain truth; and if you will look in this, you will
see yourself as you are.”

. And the younger son looked in it, and saw his face as
it were the face of a beardless youth, and he was well
enough pleased; for the thing was a piece of a mirror.

44 Here is no such great thing to make a work about,”
said he; “ but if it will get me the maid I shall never com¬
plain. But what a fool is my brother to ride into the
world, and the thing ail the while at home! ”

NON-ATTACHMENT III 30&

So they rode back to the other dun, and showed the
mirror to the King that was a priest; and when he had
looked in it, and seen himself like a King, and-his house
like a King's house, and all things like themselves, he
cried out and blessed Cod. “ For now I know,” said he,

“ there is no truth but the plain truth; and I am a King
indeed, although my heart misgave me.” And he pulled
down his temple, and built a new one; and then the
younger son was married to the maid.

In the meantime the elder son rode into the world to
find the touchstone of the trial of truth ; and whenever he
came to a place of habitation, he would ask the men if
they had heard of it. And in every place the men an¬
swered : “ Not only have we heard of it, but we alone, of

all men, possess the thing itself, and it hangs in the side
of our chimney to this day." Then would the elder son
be glad, and beg for a sight of it. And sometimes it would
be a piece of mirror, that showed the seeming of things;
and then he would say, “This can never be, for there
should be more than seeming." And sometimes it would
be a lump of coal,, which showed nothing; and then he
would say, “This can never be, for at least there is the
seeming." And sometimes it would be a touchstone in¬
deed, beautiful in hue, adorned with polishing, the light
inhabiting its sides; and when he found this, he w uld
beg the thing, and the persons of that place would give it
him, for all men were very generous of that gift; so that
at the last he had his wallet full of them, and they chinked
together when he rode; and when he halted by the side of
the way he would take them out and try them, till his
head turned like the sails upon a windmill.

“ A murrain upon this business!" said the elder son,
“for I perceive no end to it. Here I have the red, and
here the blue and the green; and to me they seem all ex¬
cellent, and yet shame each other. A murrain on the
trade! If it were not for the King that is a priest and
whom I have called my father, a id if it were not for the
fair maid of the dun that makes my mouth to sing and my
heart enlarge, I would even tumble them all into the salt
sea, and go home and be a King like other iclk."

310

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

But he was like the hunter that has seeli a stag upon
a mountain, so that the night may fall, and the fire be
kindled, and the lights shine in his house; but desire of
that stag is single in his bosom.

Now after many years the elder son came upon the
sides of the salt sea; and it was night, and a savage place,
and the clamour of the sea was loud. There he was aware
of a house, and a man that sat there by the light of a
candle, for he had no fire. Now the elder son came in to
him, and the man gave him water to drink, for he had no
bread; and wagged his head when he was spoken to, for
he had no words.

“ Have you the touchstone of truth ?” asked the elder
son; and when the man had wagged his head, “ I might
have known thaf,” cried the elder son. “I have here a
wallet full of them!” And with that he laughed, although
his heart was weary.

And with that the man laughed too, and with the fuff
of his laughter the candle went out.

“ Sleep,” said the man, “for now I think you have
come far enough; and your quest is ended, and my candle
is out.”

Now when the morning came, the man gave him a
clear pebble in his hand, and it had no beauty and no
colour; and the elder son looked upon it scornfully and
shook his head; and he went away, for it seemed a small
affair to him.

All that day he rode, and his mind was quiet, and the
desire of the chase allayed. “ How if this poor pebble be
the touchstone, after all?” said he: and he got down from
his horse, and emptied forth his wallet by the side of the
way. Now, in the light of each other, all the touchstones
lost their hue and fire, and withered like stars at morning;
but in the light of the pebble, theii beauty lemained, only
the pebble was the most bright. ^ And the elder son smote
upon his brow. “How if this be the truth?” he cried,
“ that all are a little true?” And he took the pebble, and
turned its light upon the heavens, and they deepened
about him like the pit; and he turned it on the hills, and

NON-ATTACHMENT III

31)

the hills were cold and rugged, but life ran in their sides
so that his own life bounded; and he turned it on the dust
and he beheld the dust with joy and terror; and he turned
it on himself, and kneeled down and prayed.

“Now, thanks be to God,” said the elder son, “I have
found the touchstone; and now I may turn my reins, and
ride home to the King and to the maid of the dun that
makes my mouth to sing and my heart enlarge.”

Now when he came to the dun, he saw children play¬
ing by the gate where the King had met him in the old
days; and this stayed his pleasure, for he thought in his
heart, “It is here my children should be playing.” And
when he came into the hall, there was his brother on the
high seat and the maid beside him; and at that his anger
rose, for he thought in his heart. “ It is I that should be
sitting there, and the maid beside me.”

“ Who are you? ” said his brother. “ And what make
you in the dun? ”

“ I am your elder brother,” he replied. “ And I am
come to marry the maid, for I have brought the touch¬
stone of truth.”

Then the younger brother laughed aloud. “Why,”
said he, “I found the touchstone years ago, and married
the maid, and there are our children playing at the gate.”

Now at this the elder brother grew as gray as the
dawn. “I pray you have dealt justly,” said he, “for I
perceive my life is lost.”

“Justly?” quoth the younger brother. “It becomes
you ill, that are a restless man and a runagate, to-doubt
my justice, or the King my father’s, that are sedentary
folk and known in the land.”

“Nay,” said the elder brother, “you have all else,
have patience also; and suffer me to say the world is full
of touchstones, and it appears not easily which is true.”

“ I have no shame of mine,” said the younger brother.
“ There it is, and look in it.”

So the elder brother looked in the mirror, and he was
sore amazed; for he was an old man, and his hair was
white upon his head; and he sat down in the hall and

312

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

wept aloud.

“Now,” said the younger brother, “see what a fool's
part you have played, that ran over all the world to seek
what was lying in our father's treasury, and came back
an old carle for the dogs to bark at, and without chick or
child. And I that was dutiful and wise sit here crowned
with virtues and pleasures, and happy in the light of my
hearth.*’

** Methinks you have a cruel tongue,'* said the elder
brother; and he pulled out the clear pebble and turned its
light on his brother; and behold the man was lying, his
soul was shrunk into the smallness of a pea, and his heart
was a bag of little fears like scorpions, and love was dead
in his bosom. And at that the elder brother cried out
aloud, and turned the light of the pebble on the maid, and,
lo! she was but a ‘mask of a woman, and withinsides she
was quite dead, and she smiled as a clock ticks, and knew
not wherefore.

“Oh, well," said the elder brother, “I perceive there
is both good and bad. So fare ye all as well as ye may in
the dun; but I will go forth into the world with my pebble
in my pocket.”

The “ piece of a mirror ” typifies the ordinary superficial
view of the world,—the soul is eternal, good and evil are irre¬
concilable contraries, virtue always prospers, my umbrella is
God’s umbrella. This is what Confucius had in mind when he
declared (rather strongly for him),

The “Good men” of the villages are the thieves of Virtue.

r H > n » 'i& ± MM6o (tt » T -tr. V Ho)

Mencius, explaining this, as though he were commenting on
the two Kings and the younger brother in the fable above,
says,

Confucius means, ‘I hate the imitation of reality. I
hate tares, for they will be mistaken for corn. I hate

NON-ATTACHMENT III

m

glibness, 1 for it will be mistaken for righteousness. I hate
bluntness, for it will be mistaken for sincerity. I hate the
music of Tei for it will be mistaken for real*music. I hate
reddish-blue, for it will be mistaken for vermilion. I hate
the “good men” of the villages for they will he mistaken
for the really virtuous/

?l t no m n tb # # 0 m : # 0 sa js ®l v.y

& 1*0 ® « SI m ilio JB n n o K ®L id too

m m & Jt ®l * teo m m 0 & Jt si % ui,

S K<o as SL ffio (& : i\ -Ls ^ h I* u 1* ,)

“It had no beauty and no colour.” The truth is like health,

t

or the air we breathe; we don’t realise it when we have it, it
seems so common and tasteless. Confucius, when he perceived
the truth, could not express it in words, and yet did so:

Standing by a stream, Confucius said, ‘It flows on and
on like this, never ceasing day or night/

t -{a in j* i -u m k in m

(nJW Ml* 1* 'no)

The commentators explain this as re f erring to the

course of nature, and make Confucius wish to continue his
moral striving as unceasingly as the flowing of the stream.
Mencius also (IV, ii, 18) falls into the same error. This kind
of misinterpretation of his words was no doubt the reason for
Confucius’ cry,

I wish never to speak,

T-H* T » M 7i*o

The statement “It flows on and on without ceasing day or
night,” is quite plain, in fact too plain. People won’t take it
just as it is. They don’t like the penny plain; they want the
twopence coloured. It is a w r onder, when one comes to think
1 This and what follows a free version of the Analects XVII, 17, 18.

314 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

of it, that Zen, which has no dogmas, no badges, no uniforms,
no flags, nothing but an open secret to give away, should have
continued to exist for more than a few score years. There
must be, aftfer all, a large number of human beings that
Stevenson describes so well, “ like the hunter that has seen a
stag upon a mountain, so that the night may fall, and the lire
be. kindled, and the lights shine in his house; but desire of
that stag is single in his bosom/' “ In the light of each other,
all the touchstones lost their hue and Are.” So with Chris¬
tianity and Buddhism, Determinism and Free Will, Material¬
ism, Spiritualism, Confucianism, Positivism, Taoism, Commu¬
nism and all the rest of the -isms,—they are mutually destruc¬
tive. “But in the light of the pebble their beauty remained,
only the pebble was most bright." When we understand what
Zen is, all those -isms become full of beauty and truth. * Then
Christianity, with all its unnecessary ornamentations, is
enough; there is no need to know a syllable about Buddhism.
The Analects of Confucius are enough, without the Bible or the
Sutras. Or simple devotion to one's family, to one’s country
is enough, or the Origin of Species will provide us with all
we need. 1 Whatever it may be, however foolish, prejudiced,

1 Popular proverbs alone express all the essential meaning of a man’s
experiences. Here are some examples chosen from the first few pages
of Everyman’s Dictionary of Proverbs.

1. A coward’s fear may make a coward valiant. (When it goes
down deep enough to reach the unity of the mind.)

2. Beggars must not be choosers. (Who is not a beggar? the
same meaning as the following.)

3. Comparisons are odious. (All Zen iscontained in this proverb.
Zen is the comparison-less life.)

4. He who hesitates is lost. (Even when you “Look before you
leap," there must be no hesitation in your looking.)

5. He that hath nothing is frightened at nothing. (Absolute pover¬
ty is absolute freedom.) *

6. In every country the sun shineth in the morning. (This we un¬
derstand when we have the ,r touchstone." This is the real “Buddhist
peace.")

NON-ATTACHMENT III *315

obscene,—anything will do, for, as Blake said,

Everything possible to be believ’d is an image of truth.

The expression of this thought in Zen is both more simple and
more transcendental. When we are free of relativity,

We sleep with both legs outstretched, free of the true, free
of the false.

u m m M M as ft M R (rn W ill S)

This is why, when he turned the light of the pebble on the
heavens, “ they deepened round him like the pit.” The uni¬
verse is not limited between any pair of contraries, it is thus
illimitable. The hills were “cold and rugged,” (no senti¬
mentality about Nature), but “ life ran down their sides.” He
beheld the dust with “joy and terror,” no philosophic calm,
Buddhist peace, passive meditation here. When he turned the
light of the pebble on himself, he kneeled down,—what else
could be do? He prayed. What for? To whom? To what?
Prayer is union with God, when there is no sense of two but
of one only. Not so much “He prayed,” but as in the creation
of Adam, “ He becapie a living prayer.”

CHAPTER XXI

NON-ATTACHMENT

PART IV

' The wind bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the
sound thereof , but canst not tell whence it comeih , and
whither it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the spirit .

The absolute freedom of life, its unpredictability, is here
stated in general terms. As a particular example we may take
the following from the Hekiganroku:

A monk asked Kyorin, “What is the meaning of Daru-
ma’s coming from the west (that is, the essence of re¬
ligion)?” Kyorin answered, “I am stiff with sitting so
long.”

fltinmtto iiiw&awwssaio

(«»** T U

Where did this answer come from? And how far, during the
following eight hundred years, has it gone? Kyorin was born
of the spirit and we can understand him to the extent that we
are born of the spirit, and only to that extent. We may quote
Blake and say

One thought fills immensity,

and explain Kyorin as expressing this one thought. But we
remain with the one thought. We do not fill immensity. We
have a thought of immensity, but it is only a poor, flabby little
thought.

316

NON-ATTACHMENT IV

317

There is a passage from* a poem ascribed to Taliessin, a semi-
mythical Welsh poet of the sixth century AD., which helps us
to understand the meaning of “ born of the spirit.”

The wind without flesh, without bone, without veins,
without feet, is strong; the wind has no wants, but the
sea whitens when he comes out of nothing. He is in the
field, he is in the wood, without age, without old age. He
was not born, he has never been seen, he will not come
when desire wishes. He is loud voiced, he is mute. He is
uncourteous, he is vehement, he is bold. He is bad, he is
good. He is yonder, he is here. He comes from the heat
of the sun, and he comes from the coolness of the moon.

Let us take this phrase by phrase and elucidate Christ’s “ born
of the spirit ” with the help of some of the text-books of Zen.
You may think some of these comparisons are fanciful. Re¬
member first, that it is necessary to understand b:>th separately
before you criticise the comparison; and second, that when
we compare the wind and the spirit, the material with the
immaterial, we are not using the wind as a symbol. The wind
and the .spirit are both the working of Nature, of /k>d, of
Reality, the same in every place, the same yesterday, today and
forever.

Without flesh, without bones, without veins, without feet, the
wind is strong .

Kyogen said, 44 This is what it’s like. Here is a man up a
tree, holding on to a branch by his mouth; neither his
hands nor feet can touch the tree. A man at the foot of the
tree calls out to him, 4 What is the essence of Buddhism?'

If he does not answer he denies the other man (the knowl¬
edge of the Truth). If he answers he will fall and lose his
life. In such a case, if you were that man, what would
you do?”

• ft fn tflALK* T- * m

318 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

(Mn HU *a«J

The wind has no bones. Have you any bones, any precious
bones? Which do you love more, your bones or the truth?
The wind, though invertebrate, is strong. Are you strong?
Blake says,

Man's perceptions are not bounded by Organs of Percep¬
tion. (That is, he is not bounded byhis hands and feet.]

He perceives more than'Sense (tho* ever so acute) can dis¬
cover. The Desire of Man being Infinite, the possession is
Infinite, and himself Infinite.

He is not bounded by a tree nor by death or the fear of it.
This is why he is strong. Sepp6{®*fc) was one of these s rong
men. lie picked up the terrestrial globe between finger and
thumb, and found it as large as a grain of millet.

ft***#*n**ffc* (flitt. *)

The wind has no wants .

We can compare this to Joshu’s declaration to the congrega¬
tion of monks; he is quoting from the Shinjinmci :

The Way is not difficult; only there must be no wanting
or not wanting.

m m tc jft m m m m* m m n c»■«* -j

This is all very well, but what shall we say of Browning’s The
Statue and the Bust , and Blake’s

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle, than nurse unacted
desires,

where we are told not only to have wants, and violent ones,

NON-ATTACHMENT IV

319

but that it is a sin not to put them into action ? As pointed
out above, the state of wanting which is the root of ail evil is
the condition of the mind when its desires obstruct, diminish,
d ffuse the energy of the personality^ It is this kind of the
wanting of the instincts which both Joshu and Blake are de¬
nouncing. To give a simple illustration: you arrange to go
out for a picnic on Sunday and make all the necessary pre¬
parations. Sunday morning dawns with a drizzle. You spend
the morning peering out of the window at the sky and waste
a whole day. This, you will say, explains J6shu's “wanting/*
but how about Blake's unacted desires? Does he mean that
we are to go out for a picnic even though it is pouring with
rain? Blake speaks of the necessity of acting desires, but this
does not mean every fleeting, foolish whim and fancy. The
truth is, we do not know what our real desires are. We spend
our lives in attempting to obtain things we really do not want
at all. This is why Blake says

If a fool persists in his folly he will become wise,

and find out what his desires truly are.

In the contest of the poems in the Rokusodankyo, Jinshu’s
poem shows his earnest desire to purify his passions, control
his desires, and obtain the state of mind where all his wants
were for the good only:

The body is the Tree of Salvation

The mind is a clear mirror.

Incessantly wipe and clean it!

Let no dust fall on it!

# & m « ffl>

*i> in nfl o

i*

£ k

320

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

E-No's poem expresses his want, his desire, his choice, which
is also a non-wanting, a non-desiring, a non-choosing. Does
the feather want to sail along in the wind? Or is it blown
unwillingly? Did you want to be born or not? In Christian
terminology, K-No’s poem expresses his view that the all-im¬
portant thing is that our will shall become the will of God, or
rather, that we should realise that from the beginning, our will
and (rod’s will was exactly the same, only custom, the intel¬
lect, self-full-ness, blinded our eyes to it.

Salvation is nothing like a tree,

Nor a clear mirror;

Essentially, not a 14 thing” exists;

- What is there then for the dust to fall on?

m m & w
* # m -
f l, J sE #£ 3%o

The sea whitens when he comes out of nothing\

E-No says, " He free. Don’t be bound by your choosings and
wantings. Never mind your sins. Act your desires. Act
your Desire. Do not abide in delusion, do not abide in en¬
lightenment. Do not let the mind dwell on goodness or evil.
Things and the self are void.” The mind changes ("whitens”)
moment by moment, but the wind of circumstances that dis¬
turbs it comes from the void, "with whom there is no variable¬
ness, neither shadow of turning,” Thus the "desire” of Blake
is the "non-desiring” of J6shu, for no, yes, wanting, not want¬
ing, relative, absolute,—-all these are only the whitening of the
waves of the sea of words.

A monk asked Fuketsu, "Both speaking and silence "belong

NONvATTACHMENT IV 321

to the relative world: how can we escape these two errors?”
Fuketsu said,

I always think of Konan in March;

Partridges chirp among -the scented blossoms.

ML * *n ft H fit lfflo »9K » M m in « Sfi 81,

1$ &*»S ?li ft

(fc pj HB> n |- w)

Fuketsu did not speak, he was not silent. A voice came out
of the Nothing; the question was answered. Christ, in the
same way, tells his disciples to transcend speaking and non*
speaking:

But when they deliver you up, take no thought how
or what ye shall speak; for it shall be given you in that
same hour what ye shall speak.

This was a little above their heads. Christ here forgot his
own maxim, “Cast not your pearls before swine,” and acted
on a better one, “ Fear not to sow because of the birds.”

He is in the field\ he is in the wood .

On the one hand the ideal is an “ ever fix&d mark ”; on
the other it has this elusive chameleon dike quality that St.
Paul describes in

I am made all things to all men.

You think the wind is in the field, but as soon as' you are there,
you see the trees in the wood are tossing their heads, while
here is “ not a breath of wild air.”

Joshu asid, “Can we get in harmony (with the Way)?”
Nansen answered, “If you try to approach it, you will get
$way from it,”

322 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

afflEo «ht fts-o mm,

(fcPJHU +A)

The Way is really rather exasperating. It is just like the
Looking Glass world; like holding sand in the fist, the harder
you hold it, the more it runs away. It is like walking the
tight-rope. Think the rope is laid on the ground and you can
walk on it with ease. Remember it is suspended in mid-air,
and not a step-can you advance. Think of Zen, of the Void,
of Good and Evil, and you are bound hand and foot. Think
only and entirely and completely of what you are doing at the
moment and you are .as free as a bird.

Without Age, without Old Age; he was not born.

What is life? Life gives us a chance to live an Eternal Life.
Death means there is no more chance. Confucius therefore
says,

If a man sees Truth in the morning, he may die in the eve¬
ning without regret.

T r -l i ffl M 9 *£ "T %> (* au m a)

The meaning, the object of our life, is this state of being un¬
born, age less, immortal, Which is our real nature and the
nature of all things.

* Sharishi, all things are void; they are unborn, they never
perish.

-frfo j\ -JLiitik&ia o (tewm

This is the immortality of man that underlies all the parables
and personifications of the Christian and Buddhist religions,
but this immortality is visible only to that inward eye which
is the true bliss of man’s eternal solitude.

HON-ATTACHMENT IV 323

He will not come when desire wishes.

This is one of the many truths brought home to us by Kurata’s
The Priest and his Disciples (ttj '4i t ZO T*). 1 Matthew Ar¬
nold says,

We cannot kindle when we will

'Hie fire which in the heart resides,

The spirit bloweth and is still;

In mystery our soul abides.

bu. Zen will not allow us to have such thoughts, such states
ol mind. If you are the master of your fate, the captain of
your soul, then when you get into such a condition, you are
only a Jonah, not a captain, and you had better chuck yourself
off the ship and see how it gets on without you. When the
sick man is mimbling-mambling, the only tiling is for the fire¬
man to cleave him to the bed with his hatchet. Then he will
suffer a metamorphosis described in the following lines:

For long years a bird in a cage,

Today flying along with the clouds.

# ¥ ffi <l« .i'j, n i\ 'ji at 3 m n f.j

He is loud, he is mule.

Bokushu said to a monk, “ Where have you come from
recently?” The monk said “Kwats!” Bokushu said.

So you have given men a ‘ICwats/ have you?” The
monk again said, “Kwats!” Bokushu said, “When you
have finished with your ‘Kwats, Kwats/ when then?”
The monk was siient. Bokushu thereupon struck him, cry¬
ing, “You plundering, empty-headed rascal!

HtfliWHft. E: MX tit* « H.

1 Translated by Glenn Shaw, a play concerning the life of Shinran,

2 This striking and abuse may be a mark of approval.

324 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

' - *»o fft X ffl Hi H « M ift ft @ £o

»*hSo wffl-jrHi si &; t& m Mo mna* h

Here are two anecdotes illustrating the speaking and the silent
expression of one’s own nature, that is of Nature; the first of
General Nogi where Nature is loud, and the second of Admiral
Togo, where it is mute. 1

General Nogi once went to Normal School of a certain pre¬
fecture. With his snow-white heard and black eyes, he
stood erect upon the platform. “ Teachers, boys, I am
General Nogi, who, at Port Arther, killed so many of your
fathers and brothers.” And the tears fell from his eyes.

This was speaking, Speaking like one of the little children that
Christ made an eternal pattern for proud man.

Just before the defeat of the Russian Baltic fleet, Admiral
Togo was summoned before the Emperor Meiji. The Em¬
peror said, “Admiral Togo, do you expect to win this
battle?” Togo answered, “Yes, sire, l do.” But the Em¬
peror fetill looked unsettled and asked “Are you quite con¬
fident?” T6go replied “Quite confident, Your Majesty.”
When he was retiring from the Presence, the Emperor
called him back and again asked, “You say you will win?”
Admiral Togo answered, “ Set your mind at rest; 1 shall
destroy the entire enemy fleet.” The Emperor smiled.

Just as there are two kinds of speech so there are two kinds
of taciturnity. We do not say Togo had the right kind of
taciturnity because lie won the Battle of the Japan Sea.
Winning or losing has nothing to do with Zen even though the
chances of winning may be increased by it, for Zen has nothing
to do with chance. When Admiral logo said “I shall destroy
the entire enemy fleet,” his mind was raised above the pos¬
sibilities of fever, hurricanes, shipwreck and all the accidents
1 Taken from M p „

NON-ATTACHMENT IV

323

that flesh is heir to. He looked on the face of the Emperor
and his real essence of mind was expressed in all that he did
not say.

He is uncourteous .

We see this in Christ's cleansing of the temple, a scene
which many Christians do not like to picture, but which is
very clear in the light of Zen. We see it in his treatment of
his family, the Pharisees, and often, perhaps too often, of his
disciples. The rudeness of Zen is proverbial, but there are, it
goes without, saying, two kinds of rudeness. Here is an ex¬
ample of the Zen kind:

Suibi was asked by Ryuge, “What is the essence of
Buddhism ? ” Ryuge replied, “Just hand me that Zenban, 1
will you?” Ryuge passed it to him, whereupon Suibi
struck him.with it.

BE T I") V in M JL ill W i ,l i * ft, « 91

« ift |ijl fee fee, » * » j ft ft W

fid ♦To -T>

Rudeness is characteristic of children, old people, idiots, and
animals, and therefore highly recommended.

He is vehement; he is bold.

Ordinary impudence, and the impudence of Zen; how shall
we distinguish these? In practice it is easy, since the im¬
pudence of Zen is accompanied by goodness, that is, it is not
self-seeking. But the fundamental difference is more profound,
it is a question of sensitiveness. Ordinary impudence is due
to insensitiveness both of a general kind, and also to the parti¬
cular persons and circumstances. Zen impudence is a uni-

l A kind of stick for renting the chin on, when weary of sitting long.

326 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERAftfftE

versal sensitiveness in which individual sensitivenesses take
their proper place, assume their relative importance. We are
not swamped by the emotions of the particular case; we know
that life is proceeding steadily, at its usual pace, whatever our
own circumstances may be. (But it is not that we have two
thoughts, one of the individual and one of the universal; this
would make a mere battledore and shuttle-cock of the mind.)
We feel, to some extent at least, as God feels, and act accord¬
ingly ; and God is impudent.

For thereris no respect of persons with God.

This divine vehemence and boldness, which we feel in
Blake, Spinoza, Paul, Mahomet, St Francis, Luther, is not to
be obtained through any study or intellectual understanding
of Zen, for Zen begins just at the point where the intellect
leaves off. 'Phis is the idea of the 46th Case of the Mumonkan,

Sekiso said, “ How can you jump another step from a
pole a hundred feet high?”

f; M *11 fir S. i'i K T yfj ill fnj j£ 'Po

Christ said,

Destroy this temple and three days I will raise it up again.
JJc is bud, he is good.

Sometimes we must save life, sometimes take life, some¬
times create, sometimes destroy. In his Criticism of the 3rd
Case of the Hekiganroku , Kngo says,

If you are a real man, you can freely drive away the
fanner’s ox, or snatch the food from a starving man.

Ti It * o' K > it H fM tt A £ To <S #1 A £

& « f* Wo

NON* ATT AC II ME NT IV

327

Another famous case where morality and Zen seem at
Variance is the following:

The monks of the Eastern Hall were having a quarrel
with those of the Western Hall about who should own a
kitten. Rushing out, Nansen snatched up the kitten and
cried, “ Now, all of you; if any one of you can say a word
of Zen, I will spare the kitten. Otherwise, I will kill it! ”
They all stood dumbfounded, so Nansen killed it on the
spot.

m a fu m, ® hi A m f m Mo ft ji a & *

*• m n> fin it, m v m, w m # ii&* * m k 0 ft

m.Wx±o mmm+ tw >

Certainly the S.P.C.A. would never consent to overlook this,
but actually it is above criticism. However, to explain it by
saying that the Truth, that the enlightenment of the monks,
is of greater importance than the life of a kitten, is to mis3 the
point altogether.

He is yonder , he is here .

Describing the state of the enlightened, Hakuin says,

We see all phenomena as eternal realities, yet as
phenomena; whether we go or whether we return, for us
there is no movement.

m w o) *n t lt > is < t w z> t {& m 4 C,

(ft mmm &)

This is the irresistible force and the immovable post that
puzzles our boyhood; this is the still small voice; the hare that
cannot calch up to the tortoise; the colourless bamboo that*
we see green and paint black.

*

He comes from the heat of the sun, and he comes fiom the
coolness of the moon .

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

328

That is, from everywhere, from everything; and wherever
it comes from, it is the wind.

Baso was ill, and the head monk came and asked him,

“ How are you feeling recently ? ” Baso said, “ There is a
Sun Buddha and a Moon Buddha.”

JB*W**o R&lH. fnfij.

A ftp l-K 0 ® W H M Wo (» m S)

The Sun Buddha lives 1800 years, the Moon Buddha only one
day and night, but wherever life is, it is life.

It is not growing like a tree
In bulk; doth make Man better be;

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,

To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere.

However long or short your life is, it is a complete one. 1
Whether the wind comes from the heat of the sun or the cool¬
ness of the moon, it is the wind; to fill every moment of a life
with living, that is to be like the lily, the plant and flower of
Light:

In small proportions we just beauties see;

And in short measures life may perfect be.

1 11 git en votre volont£, non au nombre des ans, que vous ayez assey
vCcu. (Montaigne)

CHAPTER XXII

DEATH

Right up to modern times, but especially in the Eliza¬
bethan Age , 1 the minds of men were preoccupied with the
thought of death, or rather, with the thought of what would
happen after death. Shakespeare himself seems to have shared
this emotion, and expresses it with especial force, particularly
in Hamlet and Measure for Measure .

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in-cold obstruction and to rot;

This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;

To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world.

This fear naturally causes extreme confusion of thought. In
the Bible itself we have on the one hand such passages as,

For the living know that they shall die but*the dead
know not any thing. Also their love, and their hatred,
and their envy, is now perished: neither have they any
more a portion for ever in anything that is done under the
sun.

and on the other hand everlasting fire and everlasting bliss
after death. In Shelley's Adonais there is the same confusion.
In the fifty-first verse it says,

l See Death and Elizabethan Tragedy , Spencer.

m

330 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

From the world’s bitter wind
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb*

What Adonais is, why fear we to become ?

but in verse thirty-nine we have been told,

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep —

He hath awakened from the dream of life.

This confusion of morbid thought and oversensitive feeling is
found4he less as we approach Nature. Montaigne says,

Regardons a terre les pauvres gens que nous y voyons
epandus, la tete peflchante apres leur besogne, qui ne
savent ny Aristote ny Caton, ny exemple, ni precepte: de
ceux-la tire Nature tous les jours des effets de Constance et
de patience, plus purs et plus roides que ne sont ceux.que
nous Studious si curieusement en recole.

This natural attitude of human beings towards death is shown
in one of the best of Katherine Mansfield’s works, At the Bay.
Old Mrs. Fairfield has been looking back down the years and
thinking of the dead. Kezia, her grandchild, asks,

“ Does everybody have to die? ”

“ Fycrybody! ”

“Me?” Kezia sounded fearfully incredulous.

“ Some day, my darling.”

“ But, grandma.” Kezia waved her left leg and wag¬
gled the toes.

They felt sandy. “ What if I just won’t? ”

The old woman sighed again and drew a long thread from
the ball.

“ We’re not asked, Kezia,” she said sadly.

“ it happens to all of us sooner or later.”

Kezia lay still thinking this over. She didn’t want to die.

It meant she would have to leave here, leave every where,
for ever, leave — leave her grandma. She rolled over
quickly.

DKATtf

331

“Grandma," she said in a startled voice.

“What, my pet!”

“ You’ve not to die/' Kezia was very decided.

“Ah, Kezia"—her grandma looked up and smiled and
shook her head—“ don’t lets talk about it.”

“But you're not to. You couldn't leave me. You
couldn't not be there." This was awful. “Promise me
you won't ever do it, grandma," pleaded Kezia.

The old woman went on knitting.

“ Promise me! Say never! "

But still her grandma was silent. Kezia rolled off the bed;
she couldn't bear it any longer, and lightly she leapt on to
her grandma's knees, clasped her hands round the old
woman’s throat and began kissing her, under the chin, be¬
hind the ear, and blowing down her neck.

“Say never . . . say never ... say never—" she gasped
between the kisses. And then she began, very softly and
lightly, to tickle her grandma.

“ K£zia! " The old woman dropped her kitting. She
swung back in the rocker. She began to tickle Ivezia.
“Say never, say never, say never," gurgled Kezia, while
they lay there laughing in each other's arms. “Come,
that's enough, my squirrel! That's enough, my wild
pony!" said old Mrs. Fairfield, setting her cap straight.

“ Pick up my knitting.”

Both of them had forgotten what the “never" was
about.

In Wordsworth's Address to the Scholars of the Village School
(1798) he illustrates his own maxim, uttered under similar
circumstances, in The Excursion (III, 231), that

Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop
Than when we soar.

(To paraphrase this, we may say, “What cannot be explained
to a child, what a child cannot understand, is not true; or if
true, is not worth knowing.")

332 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Here did he sit confined for hours;

But he could see the woods and plains.

Could hear the wind and mark the showers
Come streaming down the streaming panes.

Now stretched beneath his grass-green mound
He rests a prisoner of the ground.

He loved the breathing air,

He loved the sun, but if it rise
Or set, to him where now he lies,
brings not a moment’s care.

The last three lines, in their cadences, in their tones and over¬
tones, express the general meaning of death,

the Ca’m oblivious tendencies
Of Nature, 'mid her plants and weeds and flowers,

And silent overgrowings,

Excursion II, 927.

the truth that all is change, nothing is permanent in ourselves
or the outside world. But death comes nearer to us, deeper in
meaning. Bridges’ Winter Nightfall has the same inevitability,
but with more pain, more wrenching of the mind.

The day begins to droop,—

Its course is done:

But nothing tells the place
Of the setting s\in.

The hazy darkness deepens
And up the lane
You may hear, but cannot see,

The homing wain.

An engine pants and hums
In the farm hard by :

Its lowering smoke is lost
In the lowering sky.

i>B'ATH 3&

The soaking branches drip
And all night through
The dropping will not ceas*

Iti the avenue.

Every line speaks of death: the last three verses, though sub¬
dued and resigned, are hardly necessary, but with the human
element “ bring the eternal note of sadness in.”

A tall man there in the house
Must keep his chair:

He knows he will never again
Breathe the spring air.

His heart is worn with work;

He is giddy and sick
If he rise to go as far
As the nearest rick.

He thinks of his morn of life,

His hale strong years.

And braves as he may the night
Of darkness and tears.

The “ horror of the shade ” we may meet without fear, with¬
out regret, but what for our friends, our father and mother,
our children, our cats and dogs? There is only one answer to
the question “ What do you think of death?” and that was the
one given by Christ himself when told of his friend's death,

Jesus wept.

Confucius gave the same answer at the early death of one of
his disciples.

When Gan-en died/Confucius groaned aloud ‘and was in¬
consolable. The discip es said, “ Is not your grief exces¬
sive?” Confucius said,/ 1 You call it excessive? If I arp
pot to lament for this man, when am I to grieve ? ”

334

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

t&XlK* "f*tt n, «

ifj W > ffli % So (it a)

Death is dreadful, grievous; and nothing can or should
alter the fact. But the more we think about death “in the
quietness of thought/' the more value it seems to have for us.
Aldous Huxley, in one of his disagreeable essays, says that
men have lifted up their little legs, and like dogs, made water
on everything — except death. Seneca also points out that
-there is something very exceptional about death. It is not
merely universal, but, unlike life, cannot be taken away from
man, and therefore we may consider it as the gift of God.

Ubique mors est, optime hoc cavit Deus.

Kripere vitam nemo non homini potest;

At nemo mortem.

So Cicero says

Tota philosopliorum vita commentatio mortis est

and the character of every man and his true value may be
known by his attitude to it. Horace has the following:

Omnem crede diem tibi deluxisse supremum
Grata superveniet, quae non sperabitur hora.

“ Think every day your last: you will receive with joy hours
on which you have not counted/’ Montaigne quotes this and
taking it in a more profound sense than Horace perhaps in¬
tended, adds,

II est incertain ou la mort nous attende, attendons-la par-
tout. La pr meditation de la mort est pr£m 'ditation de la
liberte. Qui a appris a mourir, il a ddsappris a servir. Le
savoir mourir nous affrancliit de toute suj£tion et con-
trainte.

DEATH

335

This is Spinoza's

Liber hortio de nulla re minus cogitat quam de morte..

To die is thus not merely the nature but also the du*y of man,
his true element, 1 and everywhere in Plutarch we have prao
tical examples of this attitude. When Agis, King of Sparta
was asked how a man could live in freedom, he answered* “By
scorning death! ” A Lacedemonian boy taken by the Mace¬
donian general Antigonus and sold as a slave, was ordered by
his master to do some menial task. “I will show you that
which you have bought!” he cried. “It would be shameful
in me to serve, when I have my liberty in my own hand!” and
threw himself down from the top of the house. Tacitus tells
us of a German chieftain Boiocalus who said to the Romans,
“We may lack enough land to live in, but we cannot lack
enough to die in! ” In a word, death is that which gives life
its value, as the blackboard gives meaning to the white chalk-
marks on it. This paradoxical fact is expressed in one of
Hardy’s lyrics, Last Words to a Dumb Friend, on the death of
his cat.

Strange it is this speechless thing,

Subject to our mastering.

Subject for his life and food
To our gift, and time, and mood;

Timid pensioner of us Powers,

His existence ruled by ours,

Should - by crossing at a breath
Into safe and shielded death,

By the merely taking hence
Of his insignificance—

1 Compare Mrs. Gamp, on the (supposed) death of young Bailey:
“ He was born into a wale,” said Mrs. Gamp, with philosophic coolness,
“and he lived in a wale; and he must take the consequences of sech a
pitiwation.”

336 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Loom as larg 2 ned to the sense,-
Shape as part, above man's will,

Of the Imperturbable.

When alive it is only a cat, but in death, it also

Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.

Here we have that wonderful truth so difficult to grasp and
almost impossible to retain, that

Difference is Identity
£ M BP *

that is, the relative -is the absolute, time is eternity, the finite
is the infinite. By 'going away, the cat becomes everpresent;
the death of the cat is essential to its eternity; by change, it
becomes changeless. But all this is mere words unless you
have the experience they express. Unless you love the living
cat, the beautiful sentient creature, as Hardy himself did, dis¬
crimination and equality remain separate and alien ideas. 1
Hardy concludes the poem thus:

As a prisoner, flight debarred,

Exercising in a yard,

Still retain I, troubled, shaken,

Mean estate, by him forsaken;

1 Nietzsche says,

Was aus Liebe gethan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut
und Bose.

And compare also the Spanish copla quoted in Waley’s 170 Chinese-Poem^
page 28 :

El candil se estt apagando,

La alcuza no tiene aceite —

No te digo que te vayas, ...

No te digo que te quedes.

The lamp is going out;

The oil bottle is empty.

I do not say “ Go! ”

I do not say “Stayl”

DEATH .

337

And this home, which scarcely took
Impress from his little look.

By his faring to the Dim
Grows all eloquent of him.

Housemate, I can think you still
Bounding to the window-sill,

Over which I vaguely see

Your small mound beneath the tree.

Showing in the autumn shade
That you moulder where you played.

Death, then, is meaningless without Love, without Life. Ele¬
mental and eternal love alone it is which gives value to physi¬
cal and mental annihilation in death. >That is to say,

Identity is Difference

^ met M SiJ

the absolute is the relative, eternity is time, 1 the infinite is the
finite, unchanging, eternal love endues the ephemeral, insigni¬
ficant life of the cat with glory.

Concerning that profound saying in the Analects, when
Confucius was asked about death.

If you do not know life, how can you know death ?

Legge says, “ Confucius avoids answering the important ques¬
tions proposed to him,” and Waley, 41 The reply is^a rhetorical
one and mustfiot be analysed too logically/' Looked at super¬
ficially, Confucius seems to mean only that we are to consider
the condition of the living before that of the dead, with some¬
thing of the same meaning as John's

i Compare Blake; Eternity is in love with the productions of time*

338

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how
can he love God whom he hath not seen ?

I wish, however, to take it in this way: “ If you do not know
life, how can you know death? „ If you do not know death,
how can you know life?” thus emphasising the thought of the
intimate relation which exists between life and death. In ac¬
tual fact, life and death are not to be separated. From the
moment we are born to the moment we die, we have life-
death, a stream of mental and physical changes, which at no
point can be called life and at no point death, but which at
every point is both.* Life therefore really means what I have
called “ life-death.** Death means rio more life-death.

Further, we can distinguish life and Life, animal life, ex¬
istence as a living creature, undergoing the process we call
life-death; and the Life we live when we love, when we laugh,
when we truly grasp an object (poetry), when we forget our¬
selves entirely and irrevocably (religion). That is to say, life
gives us a chance of Life, a chance to live in the eternal world
now, in “Eternity’s glad sunrise.” Death is the end of our
life and chance to Live. So when Bashd was asked, as he lay
dying, for a death-poem, he answered, Rotsu tells us,

From old times it has been customary to leave behind a
death-poem, and perhaps I should do the same. But every
moment of life is the last, every poem a death poem! Why
then at this time should I write one? In these my last
hours I have no poem.

« m m ft » K

Mskz ft*

fit tt e a & ^ u

(*»■»»*)

DEATH

Ever? poem was an expression of his Life, each one equally
the first and the last poem of his life. But it must be re¬
membered that Life and life-death are one thing, not two; Life
is life-death looked upon absolutely, as if static and immutable,
life-death is Life looked upon dynamically, as movement and
eternal change;

In Basho's well known haiku,

What stillness!

1 he voices of the cicadas 1
Penetrate the rocks.

m (i 3 61 ? <r>m B m

is the same “ Difference is identity, identity is difference. 9 ’ We
say that if there is no sound, there is silence, and if there is no
silence, there is sound, and some critics state that the sound of
the cicadas intensified the quietness of the scene. This is far
indeed from Basho's experience. We advance beyond that to
a realisation of the fact that “If there is no sound, there is no
silence; no silence, no sound,” but this still means dividing the
one fact into two, sound and silence. Basho’s poetical ex¬
perience transcended this relativity; the sound of the voice of
the cicada is the stillness. If you understand Roshi's

These two (the Existent and the Non-existent) are the
same but have different names '

ft m # ('f? m ra m m n

this presents no difficulties to the mind. In the same way
with the poem of the frog, the sound of the water is identical
with the silence that was left unspoken. So also with

1 Plural. The singular would bring the individual cicada too much
to the foreground of the mind.

340

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

A crow

Upon a leafless bough:

An autumn evening.

The crow'on the bare branch of the tree is the autumn eve¬
ning, not its symbol or poetical accompaniment or picturesque
point of interest. The reader may say, “ But after all, even
though you write “is” in italics, we all know that the crow is
one thing and the autumn eve quite another.” Yes, we know
it, but the question is, Does God know it? Or to put it in
other words, did Basho know it, at the moment of his poetic
experience? If so, then Christ is not risen and we are yet dead
in our sins, in other words, the poem is meaningless and we
are wasting our time on it. For a specific example of the
teaching of the identity of life and death, let us look at the
55th case of the Hekiganroku. 1

Dogo went with his disciple Zen gen to a certain house to
offer condolences for someone’s death. Zengen rapped on
the coffin and said to Dogo, 44 Is he alive or dead ? ” Dogo
replied, 44 1 do not say he is alive; I do not say he is dead:”
Zengen then asked, 44 Why don’t you tell me (one way or
the other) ? ” Dogo answered 44 1 will not say! I will not
say!” On their way back to the temple, Zengen said,

44 Master! do tell me! If you don’t, I’ll knock you down!”
D6go replied, “Strike me if you like—but you won’t get a
word out of me.” Zengen thereupon struck him. After¬
wards, when Dogo was dead, Zengen went to Sekiso, [an¬
other of his disciples,] and told him what had happened.
Sekiso said, 44 1 do not say he was alive, I do not say he
was dead.” Zengen asked, 44 Why don’t you tell me?”
Sekiso said, 44 1 will not say! I will not say!” Zengen
suddenly realised the truth.

1 Fortunately, this is translated in full in Suzuki's Essays in Zen ,
Series 2, pages 219 to 226. Unfortunately, it seems to have been trans¬
lated with the intention of showing (what is true,) how extremely aifficuit
the original is.

DEATH

Ml

at«» mmm*

ft » JEW*

®S> B£4*Ki M

*c> *nflN tfelT*H»ffl. *?«> tr*nft*«3
»Si trfiPffitr, ibw^jb. m> ®n 0 »*
Miiffco «i «««rKo na. ft

m^iSi «m^«o ksi tM+*^»o »a%

*»> *»<, m,

We can explain psychologically how Zengen came to a realisa¬
tion of the meaning of life and death upon the repetition of
the words of Dogo by Sekiso. We can explain rationally and
logically the identity of lifd and death. But we are no nearer
* the illumination which Zengen’s whole personality experienced
because we are using only a part of ourselves in understanding
it. If it is true, as Unmon says, that

Even the greatest of men, even those who have absolute
knowledge, become entangled in words,

* a m & ** a * m r % m ®o

we can perceive why Dogo refused to answer the question, and
refrain ourselves from asking it; but that does not mean we
have grasped the fact. However, we are now in a position to
understand, to some extent, one of Wordsworth's greatest
poems, a poem, however, in which there is not a single line of
poetry, We are Seven. It states the problem in the very first
lines:

— A simple Child,

That lightly draws its breath,

And feels its life in every limb.

What should it know of death?

Let us look first of all at Lafcadio Hearn’s answer to this ques¬
tion.

342 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Nobody could make her understand what death means ex¬
cept by such cruelty as no gentle nature could possibly
think about.

(Perhaps I have a very horrible nature, but I cannot help
wondering what cruelty one could adopt to make her under¬
stand. She had seen her sister lie moaning till she died, she
had seen her brother die, and attended the burial service of
both, heard the earth dropped on their coffins and sat on their
very graves.)

The child will grieve terribly, may even die of sorrow, but
this is only because of the knowledge that he will never
see his mother again, never feel her- caress. That is all.
The really cruel* fact is quite unknown.

(What really cruel fact is this which is unknown even when
the child dies of grief?) This is the same sort of canting
humbug which the mother (through the mouth of the child,
who would never think of saying such a thing spontaneously*)
expresses in,

The first that died .was sister Jane;

In bed she moaning lay,

Till God released her of her pain;

And then she went away.

The extraordinary thing about this poem is that it is a ques¬
tion whether Wordsworth himself understood it. Anyway, it
is difficult to believe that he understood it at all, later in life.
Does the child know about death? The answer is given in
Shelley’s Skylark:

Waking or asleep

Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream ?.

bfeA+H

Hi

Even Hardy gives it, as if unwillingly, unwittingly, in the last
verse of The Darkling Thrush, which suddenly began to sing
one dull, winter evening when all was bleak and gloomy.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

And once more in the same grudging, half-incredulous way, in
An August Midnight:

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,

And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:

On this scene enter—winged, horned, and spined—

A longings, a moth, and a dumbledore;

While 'mid my page theie idly stands
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands. ...

Thus meet we five, in this still place,

At this point of time, at this point of space.

—My guests besmear my new-penned line,

Or bang at the lamp, and sink supine.

“ God’s humblest, they! ” I muse. Yet why?

They know Earth-secrets that know not I.

That is to say the child, the skylark, the thrush, the insects,
understand the nature of death. We do not. We do not un¬
derstand it because we try to understand it, to reason about it,
divide the flow of life into two, life and death, good and bad*
loss and gain. This is an intellectual convenience that is fatal
whenever we forget (and when do we remember it ?) that the
division is artificial, verbal. However much Wordsworth per¬
sists in emphasising the difference between life and death, be-

344 ZEN. IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

tween running about in the sunshine and lying in the church¬
yard beneath the yew-trees, the little girl will not allow herself
to be dragged down to his level (from the Absolute to the Re¬
lative; in Zen parlance from %to and answers

44 We are Seven/’ She does not say 44 We were seven,” nor 44 We
shall be seven,” when united again in paradise. This 44 We
are Seven,” is the timeless, 44 Before Abraham was, lam!”

In Zen this is expressed by

Summer at its height—and snow on the rocks!

The death of winter,—and the withered tree blossoms!

Her world is not only timeless, but placeless, as indicated in
Wordsworth’s question,

44 You say that two at Conway dwell,

And two are gone to sea,

Yet ye are seven! I pray you tell,

Sweet maid, how this may be.” .

It is beyond rationality, a world in which 7—2=7. Once you
have passed the barrier of life-death, you go safely through
the forest of Relativity, says Engo.

“ Quick was the little maid’s reply.” To act, to speak, before
the mind has time to rationalise and find excuses and reasons,
before the emotions have time to colour and discolour—this is
Zen. And in the last verse, all Wordsworth’s expostulations,
explanations, subtraction sums, — 44 ’Twas throwing words
away.” Zen is

Non-dependence on words and writings;

Direct pointing to the nature of man.

DEATH

345

It was this direct pointing to his own “essence of mind” which
Wordsworth felt instinctively, that was the cause of his writ¬
ing the poem, bald and babyish as it is. One more phrase in
the last verse is worthy of note, “ The little Maid would have
her will.” Everything depends upon the will, that faculty
which is the most mysterious of all,- and disappears the mo¬
ment we reason about it. The little girl had a grip of reality
and would not relax it for all Wordsworth’s protestations. She
cared nothing for his heaven and hell, past and present, dead
and alive.

What is death ? We are seven!

What is life ? We, are seven!

In regard to the problem of death we see the distinction
between morality and religion clearly. Confucius says, in a
passage already quoted,

If he hears the Way in the morning, a man may die in
the evening without regret.

WJ !? n m 0, A 0 )

This is mora’ity at its highest point, trembling on the brink of
religion. Zen would say rather,

If a man dies without regret in the evening, he has seen
the Way in the morning.

This emphasis on death is in no way morbid. It is simply the
Christian

Unless a corn of wheat fall into the ground, and die, it
abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

What is the “fruit” that this death brings? Roshi, in para¬
graph 50, expresses it in a way closely corresponding to the
spurious passage at the end of Mark, and to many portions of
the Kwannon Kyo .

m

•ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

He who has grasped life, walks through the land meeting
no buffaloes or tigers: in a battle he need not avoid ar¬
rows and swords. For a buffalo ^ could not find a place to
thrust in his horn, a tiger no plrxe to insert his claws, a
soldier none to drive in his weapon. How is this possible ?
He does not exist in the realm of death. (That is, in the
relative, life and death world.)

sa

Mfft a * tftteffi » # ^ * * # # *o

ifc fnj Jfcl £ ft ?E flk JSo

Christians are thus justified in their insistence on the cruci¬
fixion, the death of Christ, as being of greater importance than
his life and teachings. In this sense, the personality of Christ
has a vaster meaning than that of- Buddha. The death of
Buddha look place under the Bo-tree. He rose up to save
mankind from their ignorance. Christ's death on the cross
was the visible consummation, the retrospective and prophetic
death of all humanity, all living things. 1 As Antony says of
another £reat man’s death, and with no less truth,

O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!

Then I, and you, and all of us fell down!

and this not symbolically or parabolically but as an actual fact
that is experienced, though unconsciously, whenever we re¬
joice with those that rejoice, or mourn with those that mourn.
But when I say that Christ’s death has more meaning than the
illumination of Buddha, I am in no sense comparing the two
men. I am only saying that when we think of Christ we think
of his death and when we think of Budd a we remember his
enlightenment and forget the years of anguish he passed
1 Tennyson, in Vastness , says,

He that has nail’d all flesh to the cross, till' Self died out in the
love of his kind.

DEAfH

MV

through (not less, I think, than that of Christ,) to reach it. And
death is truly the gateway of life, not the dissolution of the
body and concomitant disintegration of the soul, but the death
Paul speaks of in

So many of us as were baptised into Jesus Christ, were
baptised into his death,

what is called in Zen, the Great Death S). So in Mea¬

sure for Measure, Claudio says

The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope:

I have hope to live, and am prepared to die.

But the Duke, rejecting this relativity, answers,

Be absolute for dfeath: either death or life
Shall thereby be the sweeter.

The Great Death, a form of living up to the moment of death,
is to “die without regret,” death with honour, eternal, timeless
life, as opposed to mere life, life with dishonour, i.e. without
value, life with regret “looking before and after.” So Brutus
says,

Cowards die many times before their death.

“Cowards” means us ordinary people. If you ask, “How
many times do they die?” the answer is, “An infinite number
of times,” because Shakespeare's words apply to almost the
whole of our life, spent as it is in implicit or explicit fears for
the future, in a state of unpreparedness for all the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune, which may come at any time
and therefore are ever-present,

quae quasi saxum Tantalo semper impendet.

343 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

If only we can die to ourselves just once, once and for all, we
can say like the martyr Tankerfield at the stake,

Be the day short or never so long,

At length it ringeth to evensong.

Tankerfield suddenly perceived, at the moment of execution,
the truth tl^at underlies this apparent platitude, expressed in
Zen by

A long thing is the Long Body of Bu ’dha;

A short thing is the Short Body of Buddha.

tfc #1 ffi H # 0 (W # id ®)

To accept short things as short, long things as long, the pas¬
sage of time as the passage of time, to realise fully that meet¬
ing is the beginning of parting, life is the beginning of death,
means to accept Reality, the Absolute, the spiritual Body of
Buddha, the will of God. Soshi criticises scornfully the
weeping and wailing which he (for dramatic purposes,)
alleges took place at the funeral of Rdshi. He then says,
(in paraphrase)

Roshi happened to be born when it was time for him to be
born, and, in the process of Nature, died at his appointed
time. To be overjoyed at his birth or plunged into in¬
consolable grief at his death was equally vulgar and fool¬
ish. In olden times, a sage who had transcended this re¬
lativity of life and death, was said to have attained the
state of Cutting the Natural Thread. Ordinary people
fear death for this reason: they do not see that life and
death are one process, both present in any single occu¬
rence. [For example, the ink must “die” in the ink-pot,
before it can “ live ” on the paper.] Or again, flame is the
burning of the wood, life is the dying of the person. With¬
out burning, the destruction of the wood, there is no heat
or light. Without dying, the catabolism of body and per-

DEATH

34r

sonality there is no life. The wood is consumed to ashes,,
but the fire, the principle of combustion, is immortal. So
men appear and disappear, but the flame of existence burns
for ever.

m $ -T- [1$ -ffio as * ife T* PH ffff It PH

Aflio * itm »»s§» a

if.

(«* Strife «EH>-

Compare this with the lines which Tankerfield quoted on the
scaffold, and then with the following of Wordsworth:

A slumber did my spirit seal;

I had no human fears:

She seem'd a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

Beauty of .mind and body, the poet felt, are eternal, unchang¬
ing ; age cannot wither her. This is the world of the spirit,
the Absolute, above all joy and grief, the everlasting flame.

No motion has she now, no force;

She neither hears nor sees;

Roll'd round in earth’s diurnal course
With rocks and stones and trees!

This is the agonising every-day world, the Relative. The wood
is burned away to smoke and ashes. Yet both are true, and
without the other, each is meaningless, for the Absolute is the
Relative, the Relative is the Absolute. No wood, no (ire; no
fire, no wood. This nameless and unnameable regioh is ex¬
pressed in the last lines of The Education of Nature,

She died, and left to me

This heath, this calm and quiet scene;

The memory of what has been,

And never more will be,

350

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

This is the region of Stevenson’s poem:

Blows the wind today, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors today and now,

Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how !

Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places,

Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor,

Hills of sheep and the homes of the silent vanished races,
And winds, austere and pure:

Be it granted to behold you again in dying,

Hills of home! and to hear again the call;

Hear about the graves of the martyrs the pewees crying,
And hear no more at all.

Again in Evensong, also written at Vailima:

The embers of the day are red
Beyond the murky hill.

The kitchen smokes: the bed
In the darkly house is spread:

The great sky darkens overhead,

And the great woods are shrill.

So far have I been led,

Lord, by thy will:

So far I have followed, Lord, and wondered still.

The breeze from the embalm&d land
Blows sudden toward the shore;

And claps my cottage door.

I hear the signal, 1 Lord—I understand.

The night at thy command

Comes. I will eat and sleep and will not question more.

1 Is this Bashd’s “ the sound of the water?

CHAPTER X&III

CHILDREN

And he called to him a little child and set him in the midst
of them, and saith, “ Verily, I say unto you, except ye be¬
come as little children, ye shall in no wise enter the King¬
dom of Heaven.”

However often read or quoted, this never loses its charm and
power, partly because wefeel.even at a third or fourth remove
of translation, that these words were uttered by a man who
himself had become as a little child. The fatherhood of God,
the child-hood of man —this is the unique contribution of
Christ to our religious experience. Compare it to the logic¬
chopping, complicated, uninspired and uninspiring epigram
called the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would they
should do unto you,” which to me personally is and always has
been perfectly meaningless. When our real child's nature is
appealed to, it is irresistible, for as Ulysses says,

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,

that is, we are separated from nothing, we apprehend every¬
thing truly, because our own nature begins to work in its
original purity.

In, the Analects, we are told to respect the young only because
they may equal us in the future.

ft £ ST ft. M to m % £ S in * Tko

(lid hh — T —o)

351

352 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

but Moshi (Mencius) has something better for us:

The great man is he who does not lose his childlike heart

iT-Ho

Roshi, speaking of the man who follows the Way, says,

He is like a child alone, careless, unattached, devoid of
ambition.

Wo +

But the best example of this state of childlikeness is the pas¬
sage in the Rokusodankyd already quoted:

“Think not of good-evil, think not of good-evil! At
this moment what is your real face (nature) Myojoza?”
Emyo suddenly became enlightened.

a »a n m w? m fir & m >.

Mo m m t t * si*

What is the nature of a child ? What were those divine linea¬
ments which K-Myo suddenly saw ?

The answer to this question is contained in Wordsworth's
Characteristics of a Child three Years Old.

Loving she is, and tractable, though wild;

. And Innocence hath privilege in her
To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes;

And feats of cunning; and the pretty round

Of trespasses, affected to provoke

Mock-chastisement and partnership in play.

And, as a faggot sparkles on the hearth,

Not less if unattended and alone

Than when both young and old sit gathered round

And take delight in its activity;

Even so this happy Creature of herself
Is all-sufficient; solitude to her
Is blithe society, who fills the air

CHILDREN

353

With gladness and involuntary songs.

Light are her sallies as the tripping fawn's
Forth-startled from the fern where she lay couched;
Unthought-of, unexpected, as the stir
Of the soft breeze ruffling the meadow-flowers,

Or from before it chasing wantonly
The many-coloured images imprest
Upon the bosom of a placid lake.

Let us take these several characteristics.

1. Loving she is.

This love which springs up in -the hearts of children, and
which gradually dries away in the desert of life, must have
been one of the things Christ wanted his disciples to perceive
in the living sermon he set before them. The complete faith
and utter dependence of the child, its trustful affection, which
awoke such a response in Christ's own heart, were what en¬
abled him to say in his last agony,

Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.

Because of this word “Father" and the personification it in¬
volves, because Christians do not, in their thoughts and con¬
scious feelings, go beyond God into the region where He too
“moves and has his being,” Buddhist critics of Christianity
say, “ Buddhist philosophy and experience go deeper." As far
as the philosophy is concerned this may be so; as for the ex¬
perience, comparisons are not only odious, but blasphemous, a
sin against the Holy Ghost. Love, the love of God, the love of
Christ, the love of Amida, the love of a child, the love which
all of us feel sometimes bursting up in our hearts, this love, as
Shakespeare says, “mocks comparison." And there is n® other
experience but this; it is the beginning and end of all religion.
The personification is an intellectual habit or temperamental

354 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

convenience. It would be well to treat it as a mere question of
vocabulary. It has nothing to do with the experience of love
itself.

In one of Katherine Mansfield's stories, The Little Girl ,
Kezia finds her father something to be feared*and avoided, but
after she is taken to his room to sleep and realises his tiredness
and loneliness, greater than her own,

. “ Oh,” said the little girl, “my head's on your heart; I can
hear it going. What a big heart you've got, father dear.”

That is the true Christian experience, Buddhist experience.
Children not only have more love in their hearLs than adults,
it is also indiscriminate, until they are taught by experience,
imitation or instruction, to love this and hate that. In Blake's
A Little Boy Lost , the child says,

‘ And, Father, hoW can I love you
Or any of my brothers more ?

I love you like the little bird

That picks up crumbs around the door/

This kind of love is socially and conventionally dangerous,
and so,

The Priest sat by and heard the child,

In trembling zeal he seiz'd his hair:

He led him by his little coat
And all admir'd the priestly care.

And standing on tjie altar high,

4 Lo! what a fiend is here ’ said he,

4 One who sets reason 1 up for judge
Of our most holy Mystery.'

John tells us that
*

There is no fear in love: but perfect love casteth out fear#

1 Imagination, intuition,

CHILDREN

3S5

A young child has perfect, indiscriminate, universal love for
all things and therefore no fear whatever. As he grows older
he make the mistake of supposing that some things are friendly
and others antagonistic to him. His religious teaching should
show him that the fire that burns him, cooks his dinner; that
the fire '‘loves” him and all other things, without any distinc¬
tion whatsoever, and that that early indiscriminate love of his
was a just and justifiable instinct, a counterpart of the love of
God which sends down rain upon the just and upon the unjust,
without respect of persons. If I may for once allow myself the
luxury, the dissipation, of a comparison between Christianity
and Buddhism, I would say that in Christianity the emphasis
is on love, “Perfect love caslelh out fear," while in Buddhism
the emphasis is on fear, fear of birth, sickness, old age and
death, the four states of all phenomena (ffl 0). But if we
get rid of fear perfectly, there will naturally and inevitably
arise in our hearts, emptied of self, universal love and be¬
nevolence, for “ Perfect fearlessness casteth out hate” These
are the two halves of religion, appealing in different de¬
grees to different people according to their temperament;
one of these two is essential to a true, living understanding of
life.

2. Even so this happy Creature of herself
Is all sufficient; solitude to her
Is blithe society.

Paradoxically, this complete dependence results in com¬
plete self-sufficiency. Just as

The river glideth at its own sweet will,

so the child is a perfect microcosm of the universe, in which
ther$ is no gain or loss, separation or union, And as

356

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your
_ servant,

the child is master of the household, its strength made perfect
in weakness. Emerson says in his essay on Self-Reliance, of
children, babies and animals,

That divided and rebel mind, that distrust Of a senti¬
ment because our arithmetic has computed the strength
and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their
mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and
when we look into their faces, we are disconcerted. In¬
fancy conforms to npbody : all conform to it, so that one
babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who
prattle and play to” it.

This power through weakness is expressed very strongly by
Wordsworth in the Prelude , (V, 507)

Our childhood sits,

Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne

That hath more power than all the elements.

This same power children share with animals, birds, and other
objects of nature. Compare Dansui’s

Even before His Majesty,

The scarecrow does not remove
Its plaited hat.

i ■ *

and Issa’s

The cherry blossoms!

They have made a daimyo

Dismount from his horse.

* * JB ir & ir K

CHILDREN

33?

The nightingale!

Even before His Lordship,

That same voice!

In the Green Linnet , Wordsworth gives us another example of
self-sufficiency and bliss in solitude, which is one of the tests
of Zen. Speaking of the linnet,

While birds,-and butterflies, and flowers,

Make all one band of paramours,

Thou, ranging up and down the bowers,

Art sole in thy employment:

A Life, a Presence like the Air,

Scattering thy gladness without care,

Too blest with anyone to pair;

Thyself thy own enjoyment.

The same thought of what seems solitariness, but what is in
fact a partaking of the divine nature, playing with Stevenson’s
Unseen Playmate, is found in Emerson's

Space is ample, east and west,

But two cannot go abreast,

Cannot travel it in two:

Yonder masterful cuckoo
Crowds every egg out of the nest,

Quick or dead, except its own.

3. Light are her sallies as the tripping fawn's

Forth-startled from the fern where she lay couched;

Unthought-of, unexpected, as the stir

Of the soft breeze ruffling the meadow-flowers.

Here again we cannot help thinking of Basho’s “ sallies ”:

You light the fire

And I’ll show you something nice —

A bail of snow!

2EN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

35S

Now then!

Let's go snow-viewing

Until we tumble over!

3 6r«»tT

Look, children,

Hail-stones!

Let’s rush out!

' U *) ptrAt-iito & ft

This was the spirit which produced the following poem of
Wordsworth, easy to parody, but impossible to imitate.

Among all lovely things my Love had been;

Had noted well the stars, all flowers that grew
About her home; but she had never seen
A Glow-worm, never one, and this I knew.

While riding near her home one stormy night
A single Glow-worm did I chance to espy;

I gave a fervent welcome to the sight,

And from my Horse I leapt; great joy had I.

Upon a leaf the Glow-worm did I lay.

To bear it with me through the stormy night;

And, as before, it shone without dismay;

Albeit putting forth a fainter light.

When to the Dwelling of my Love I came,

I went into the Orchard quietly;

And left the Glow-worm, blessing it by name
Laid safely by itself, beneath a Tree.

The whole next day, I hoped, and hoped with fear;

At night the Glow-worm shone beneath the Tree:

I led my Lucy to the spot, “ Look here! ”

Oh! joy it was for her, and joy for me 1

So also with the last two lines of the Daffodils,

CHILDREN

359

And then my heart with pleasure fills

And dances with the daffodils

Condemned as bathos by Coleridge.

What is most remarkable about Stevenson’s A Child is
Garden of Verses is that he sees the child’s Zen and reflects-it
back to the child in the form of poetry:

The friendly cow, all red and white,

I love with all my heart;

She gives me cream with all her might
To eat with apple-tart.

The Zen of the cow ("with all her might”) appeals to the
child’s Zen (“ with all my heart ”).

The rain is raining all arou id,

It falls on field and tree,

It rains on the umbrellas here,

And on the ships at sea.

The rain unites all things into one, as in the next poem, sing¬
ing does.

Of speckled eggs the birdie sings
And nests among the trees;

The sailor sings of ropes and things
In ships ujxm the seas.

The children sing in far Japan,

The children sing in Spain:

The organ with the organ man
Is singing in the rain.

Auntie's Skirts is nothing more or less than a perfect haiku ,
though Japanese readers and the younger generation of Eng¬
lishmen could hardly understand it because of the "local
>’our”

330 2EN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Whenever Auntie moves around,

Her dresses make a curious sound;

They trail behind her up the floor,

A.nd trundle after through the door.

The Zen of A Child*s Garden of Verses can be tested by the
fact that in most of them it is impossible to think that they
were hot written by the child himself. The identity with their
characters of Shakespeare and Dickens, of Wordsworth with
Nature, — these are not deeper, are not more absolute than
Stevenson's with the child. The same taking upon himself
the spiritual form of -a child we see in Issa, in this respect the
greatest poet in the world. He himself says,

Ah! to be

A child -

On New Year’s Day!

IE BO) T* W fc

This attitude of Issa was the same to everything but I will
quote here only a few poems relating to childhood itself.

The child is crying;

“ Give me it!" she wails—

The harvest moon.

mn * t ox < i it <

But Davies’ original is better than my translation:

The child

That cries aloud to owrt thy light:

The little child that lifts each arm
To press thee to her bosom warm.

1 Compare the poems of Basho on pages 357-8, and contrast h\4
fatherly spirit with the childishness of Issa. ^

CHILDREN

361

New Year’s Presents:

The baby also

Holds out its tiny hands.

The kitten is mewing;

But the little girl is playing ball,

And only makes a face at him.

& < m e * a n * l t ^ i i) at

The snow having melted,

The village

Is full of children.

9 £ inH-tfi'0-T* t* i »

Wild persimmons:

The mother is eating
The bitter parts.

L & it ' £ t> It h m 0 t

But this childlikeness is just as effective when applied to serious
things, to death, for example, in We are Seven. Compare the
last lines of “ She dwelt among the untrodden ways/'

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

with Basho's poem when he revisited his former h6me, and re¬
membered his friend and master Sengin of long ago:

How many, many things
They call to mind—

These cherry-blossoms!

1 Coiutmfru

362 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATtlRfi

In Shakespeare, the mind of the child, still kept in the
most terrible and tragic situations, gives us such immortal lines
as the dying Cleopatra l

Peace, peace!

Dost thou not see my baby at my breast
That sucks the nurse asleep?

and Iras'

Finish, good lady; the bright day is done,

And we are for the dark.

Another aspect of the nature of children connected with
their “sallies,” is their casualness, 1 which they share equally
with animals and some of the greatest poets. Coleridge re¬
proves Wordsworth with an expression he invented for the
purpose, and which has kept its place in the English language,
matter-of-factness. Just as children cut through all our ideality,
sentimentality, sophistry, with a single word of truth, so
Wordsworth, and with him Vaughan, demolishes our defini¬
tions of what poetry is or should be, with a homely phrase of
the deepest religious or imaginative connotation. Take for
example Vaughan’s The Retreate:

Happy those early dayes! When I
Shin'd in my Angell-infancy

When yet I had nof walkt above
A mile or two from my first love.

This comes from the same attitude of mind as Basho's
1 Cp. Bridges:

They that in play can do the thing they would
Having an instinct throned in reasons place,

—And every perfect action hath the grace
Of indolence or thoughtlessliardihood—

These are the best

CHILDREN

363

It is deep autumn:

What kind of life

Is my neighbour's, I wonder?

A x

which means, what is God doing next door ? Again Vaughan
has

I saw Eternity the other night

Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,

All calm as it was bright

This intensity of feeling with casualness of expression is the
mark of sincerity; this continuity of spiritual vision and daily
life, with no break between, is the life of Ze i. In the Marriage
of Heaven and Hell , Blake writes,

The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked
them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke
to them.

Wordsworth's Michael, as-has been said before, is one whole
poem of matter-of-faclness, a great poem which offers the critic
no quotations at all. Even the most pathetic part of the poem,

many and many a day he thither went,

And never lifted up a single stone,

has nothing in it to arrest the attention, but as part of the
poem itself it is equal to the most purple of pilrple patches, and
superior, in the fact that it can never become hackneyed. To
return to Vaughan: in his Childe-hood we have the beautiful
line

By meer playing go to Heaven.

That is what Ryokan did:

364

2EN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

This whole long day
Of misty spring
I have spent
In playing ball

With the children.

t A SCO fc

< Ho

If only we had those “ white designs," that is to say, the self¬
lessness, the unselfconsciousness of children, how heavenly our
lives would become; but as Vaughan says,

I cannot reach it; and my striving eye
Dazzles at it, as at eternity.

There is an interesting story of a man who got in a boat and
vowed to go on rowing till he got to Paradise. On his way,
he asked some fishermen, “ How far is it to Paradise? " They
answered “Two thousand miles." On and on he rowed until
his arms were like sticks and his back felt red hot. He called
to some more fishermen and asked how far it was to Paradise.
“ Two thousand miles," they answered. Again he rowed on,
again he asked the question, and still the same answer “ Two
thousand miles." Chancing to look round, he saw Paradise
sitting in the boat behind him. This is the meaning of “ my
striving eye dazzles at it." We are spiritually shortsighted,
and, like a cat, can see far-off things, infinity or eternity or
God, but not the Heaven which is just under our noses. Chil¬
dren see it, and Wordsworth therefore apostrophizes the little
child as

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy Soul's immensity;

Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,

CHILDREN

That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind—

Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!

On whom those truths do rest,

Which we are toiling all our lives to find!

Thou, over whom thy immortality
Broods like the day, a master o’er the slave,

A pfesence which is not to be put by!

When Coleridge read this, he fairly danced with rage, he
frothed at the mouth; to compare him, Coleridge, the real
Prophet, the real Seer, the real Philosopher, to a “ six years
darling of a pigmy size ”! It was too absurd, too monstrous!

Now here, not to stop at the daring spirit of metaphor
which connects the epithets “deaf and silent,” with the
apostrophised eye: or (if we are to refer it to the preced¬
ing word, philosopher) the faulty and equivocal syntax of
the passage ;,and without examining the propriety of mak¬
ing a “ master brood o’er a slave ” or the day brood at all;
we will merely ask, What does all this mean ? In what
sense is a child of that age a philosopher? In what sense
does he read “ the eternal deep ” ? In what sense is he
declared to be " for ever haunted” by the Supreme Be¬
ing? or so inspired as to deserve the splendid titles of a
mighty prophet , a blessed seer? By reflection? by knowl¬
edge? by conscious intuition? or by any form or modifica¬
tion of consciousness? These would be tidings indeed;
but such as would presuppose an immediate revelation to
the inspired communication, and require miracles to au¬
thenticate his inspiration.

(Biographia Literaria, chap. 22)

I have quoted this at length to show what nonsense a man of
intellect, a poet and an intimate spiritual friend of Words¬
worth, could write when he comes across the intuitions, as

Unthought-of, unexpected, as the stir

Of the soft breeze ruffling the meadow-flowers.

366 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

In The Mother’s Return, the young girl's attitude to life, her
instinctive joyful acceptance of all that the intellect fights
with, is described:

No strife disturbs his sister's breast;

She wars not with the mystery
Of time and distance, night and day;

The bonds of our humanity #

and only when we have the characteristics of childhood, com¬
plete faith in all things, teachableness, self-sufficiency, sim¬
plicity and spontaneity, do we realise our own true nature, be¬
come free of the bonds of mortality, enter into the Kingdom
of Heaven, always beholding the face of God. As Bash6
teaches one of his pupils,

The man who says,

“ My children are a burden!

There are no flowers for him.

T* C te < tltAClUU L

CHAPTER XXIV

IDIOTS AND OLD MEN

Amici says,

Nothing is more characteristic of a man than the manner
in which he behaves towards fools,

and in the case of Wordsworth we may call his attitude one of
reverence. By “idiots,” we mean, of course, not raving luna¬
tics or cases of obsession, but what are often called “ simple ”
people, those whose development has, for some reason or other,
usually physical, been retarded. The fools of Shakespeare are
here excluded, for in their self consciousness, and often, pathos
(as in the case of the fool in King Lear,) they represent the very
fever and height of the disease of the will from which man¬
kind is suffering and from which Zen desires to release us.
Maggie, in Dickens' Little Dorrit, is an example of the kind of
person in whom Wordsworth saw so much poetry. Maggie is
a poor half-wit who has remained in a state of arrested de¬
velopment from the age of ten.

Maggie laughed and immediately snored. In Little
Dorrit's eyes and ears, the uncouth figure and the uncouth
sound were as pleasant as could be.

Here we see the close connection that exists between the child
and the idiot. Little Dorrit is one of the children of this world,
without envy or suspicion, full of faith, hope, and charity, able
to see the truth and beauty to which intellectual and aesthetic

867

368

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

prejudice blinds us. Chapter 20 of Roshi, quoted above, con¬
tinues,

All other men have plenty; I only seem to have lost all.

I have the mind of an absolute idiot!

#

There is a great difference between the apparent, natural
stupidity of a man whose inborn Zen causes him to avoid all
paradoxical remarks, spectacular actions, dramatic disturb¬
ances and interference with other people, and the stupidity
that comes from the levelling-down effect of so-called educa¬
tion. Dr. Johnson, (in Boswell's Life, under 1763,) tells us with
as much truth as wit, of a certain man,

Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken
him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him.
Such an access of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.

Let us now look at Wordsworth’s The Idiot Boy . His mother
put him on the pony, to go and fetch the doctor to a sick
neighbour.

But when the Pony moved his legs
Oh! then for the poor Idiot Boy!

For joy he cannot hold the bridle,

For joy his head and heels are idle.

He's idle all for very joy.

This joy in such a trivial, ordinary thing -as a pony walking,
is Qf the essence of poetry and of religion and of Zen. Com¬
pare Bash6's

We gaze

Even at horses,

This morn of snow!

A * 3 ^ fc # is * ® & * L O'

IDIOTS AND OLD MEN

The mother too has joy in her idiot son, who might well be a
source of grief and shame to her; but no, she stands at the door.

Stands fixed, her face with joy o'erflows,

Proud of herself and proud of him.

Understand and remember, ALL JOY IS IDIOT JOY! This is
the lesson of these four hundred and fifty three lines. In
Michael again we have,

Those fields, those hills—what could they less? haddaid
Strong hold on his affections, were to him
A pleasurable feeling of blind love.

The pleasure which there is in life itself \

Never forget, ALL LOVE IS IDIOT LOVE. So Shakespeare
says,

The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.

In the last lines of the poem we have the words of the Idiot
Boy himself, describing his spiritual experience in that memo¬
rable night:

“ The cocks did crow to-whoo, to-whoo,

And the sun did shine so cold! ”

—Thus answered Johnny in his glory,

And that was all his travel's story.

For those who find Johnny's words hard to understand or be¬
lieve, there is following:

Children and fools cannot lye.

Let us take some examples from Ryokan. 1 Once he was

playing hide-and-seek with some children. When the child wh$>

l See Deivdrops* on a Lotus Leaf by J. Fischer, Kenkyusha. The
author shares Ryokan's beautiful, uncritical simplicity, and the book
must be read in this spirit or not at. all.

370 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

was to find the others was chosen, the others, Ryokan among
them, ran away in different directions and hid them‘elves.
Ryokan ran to an outhouse, and seating himself on a pile of
faggols, covered his head with the long sleeves of his priestly
robe. For some reason or other the children stopped playing
ai}d left Ryokan there without saying anything to him. The
next morning some one found him there in the same place.
“ What on earth are you doing here, Ryokan ?” he said. “ Hush!
—don’t speak so loudly—1 shall be found! ” he whispered.

Another story showing his sublime “ idiocy.”

Ryokan was on bad terms with a certain Hambei, and the
villagers of a certain place determined to take advantage of
this to play a trick on Ryokan. "When he entered the village
and stood before a certain house begging, a man came out and
said to him, “ This is Mr. Hambei’s house,” and Ryokan fled
precipitately. Again he stood begging before another house,
and again he was told, “ This house is Mr. Hambei’s,” and off
he went. Everywhere it was the same, “ This house is Mr.
Hambei’s,” so at last Ryokan passed through the whole village
obtaining nothing. When the villagers realised that-Ryokan
believed implicitly all that was told him, because he himself
did not lie, they were filled with shame and regret.

Here are three of his haiku:

The sound

Of the scouring of the saucepan

Blends with the green-frog’s voice.

< nc * ar* h m If:

The garden grasses:

They fall,

And lie as they fall.
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IDIOTS AND OLD MEN

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On rainy days,

The monk Ryokan

Feels sorry for himself.

HI & ft 6 El It h & ii fc ft

The frogs down in the fields cry, “ Poor monk Ryokan, poor
monk Ryokan!” like the parrot who cried “Poor Robinson
Crusoe!,” Ryokan is more famous for his tv aka and ski.

I set out

To beg my food;

But the time was spent
Gathering violets

In the fields of spring.

t b L t' 4
Mofroo ^ o 0 ft

What have I

To bequeath as legacy?

The flowers of spring;

Hill cuckoos of summer;

Maple leaves of autumn.

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Last of all, let me quote once more Macbeth's words con¬
cerning the meaning of life:

It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

A few people concur with Macbeth's assertion, but fail to un¬
derstand it. The majority know it to be true in their heart
of hearts, but deny it. Of them, as of Macbeth himself as he
utters it, we must say,

372 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Here you stand,

Adore and worship, when you know,it not;

Pious beyond the intention of your thought,

Devout above the meaning of your will.

(Excursion, IV, 1147)

For it is absolutely true (not relatively) that life signifies noth¬
ing whatever; life is life, no more, no less. It is full of sound
and full of silence, of fury and of mildness, but of meaning it
is totally devoid; yet we cannot say that it is meaningless
either. A Zen priest once said to Basho, “A smattering, a
merely theoretical knowledge of Zen, is the cause of grave
errors/' (ft £ ifi? Jft CD i> t fo L fj'Jp) whereupon Basho has
the following haiku:

How admirable,

He who thinks not, “ Life is fleeting/*

When he sees the lightning-flash I 1

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/Life is not fleeting, life is not eternal; life is life, lightning is
lightning. But even when we say, “ Life is life/* we feel that
we are saying too much, that is, saying more than an idiot
would say .

In the extremely inconvenient and inconsistent classifica¬
tion of his poetry, Wordsworth has a special section of Poems
Referring to the Period of Old Age. In them there is nothing
of the kind of thing we find in Cicero's De Senedute . There
Cicero rebuts the four alleged infelicities of old age:

It incapacitates a man for acting in the affairs of the
world; it produces great infirmities of body; it disqualifies
him for the enjoyment of sensual gratifications; and that
it brings him within the immediate verge of death.

l Following the interpretation of $ $$$ & $f M?

idiots and old men 373

Wordsworth's attitude is at once more simple and more pro¬
found. In the presence of old men, in watching them and
listening attentively to them, he had the same experience, the
same peculiar sensation, as in the presence of children, idiots,
mountains, daffodils. Though no one would call Wordsworth
a humble man/ he had an absolute humility before these in¬
tuitions that came to him in overwhelming strength and
number in the year 1798, at the age of twenty seven, de¬
creasing rapidly with the passing of time and practically
disappearing by 1812. In a poem written in 1830, Presenti¬
ments, he looks back on that time:

The tear whose source I could not guess,

The deep sigh that seemed fatherless,

Were mine in early days:

and sees the origin divine of

A rainbow, a sunbeam,

A subtle smell that spring unbiflds,

Dead pause abrupt of midnight winds,

Ap echo, or a dream.

The poem ends with the significant lines,

God, who instructs the brutes to scent
All changes of the element,

Whose wisdom fixed the scale
Of natures, for our wants provides
By higher, sometimes humbler, guides,

When lights of reason fail.

Wordsworth, like Bach, is always speaking of himself, yet we
never feel him in the way; we look through, not at him.
Wordsworth seems to think of himself as of the Small Celan¬
dine,

374

ZEN. IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

there's not a place,

Howsoever mean it be,

But 'tis good enough for thee,

and so without condescension or affectation he shows us the
spiritual life of beggars, old men and women, children, idiots,
servant girls, and even of rascals and hypocrites.

In Resolution and Independence, Wordsworth describes the
Leech-gatherer in extreme old age,

The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs,

his body bent double, but to Wordsworth's eye, part of nature
itself which gives us “human strength, by apt admonishment."
This old man's continuity with nature, Wordsworth expresses
in three similes :

As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched on the bald top of an eminence,

Like a sea-beast crawled forth; that on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself,

Motionless as a cloud the old man stood,

That heareth not the loud winds when they call;

And moveth all together, if it move at all.

The old man, answering Wordsworth's earnest questions about
his life and manner of living, replied that he was a leech-
gatherer, hnd that he roamed from moor to moor finding them
where he could.

The old Man still stood talking by my side;

But now his voice to me was like a stream
Scarce heard; nor word from word could I divide.

The meaning of the old man's existence was so strong that
the words became unnecessary and almost inaudible:

iblots AnD OLD .men wi

What you are, speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you
say.

Afterwards, Wordsworth described this state of mind as dis¬
tinctly as he could.

While he was talking thus, the lonely place,

The old Man’s shape, and speech—all troubled me;

In my mind’s eye I seemed* to see him pace
About the weary moors continually,

Wandering about alone and silently.

And, more remote still from the original “troubling” of his
spirit,

I could have laughed myself to scorn t$ find
In that decrepit Man so firm a mind.

Like Christ, Wordsworth simply says to us, “ Corl^ider the old
man of the moors, how he lives.” This extraordinary interest
of the young man in the old appears again in The Fountain:

We talked with open heart, and tongue
Affectionate and true,

A pair of friends, though I was young
And Matthew seventy-two.

The same beautiful relation transcending the ordinary ideas
of affinity comes in the Hojoki:

At the foot of the mountain [on which my hut stands]
there is another humble cottage, where the hill-ward lives.
He has a son who often comes to see me when he has noth¬
ing to do. Together we go roaming about. He is sixteen
and I sixty, but we feel the same about things, and despite
the difference of our ages, enjoy each other’s company.

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2eN In English Literature

37s

As in the eye of Nature he has lived,

So in the eye of Nature let him die!

What we might call the life of Zen in extreme old age is ex¬
pressed in a short but perfect poem, Animal Tranquillity and
Decay .

The little hedgerow birds
That peck along the road, regard him not.

He travels on, and in his face, his step,

His gait, is one expression: every limb,

His look and bending figure, all bespeak
A man who does not move with pain, but moves
With thought.—He is insensibly subdued
To settled quiet: he is one by whom
All effort seems forgotten; one to whom
Long patience hath such mild composure given,

That patience now doth seem a thing of which
He hath no need. He is by nature led
To peace so perfect that the young behold
With envy what the Old Man hardly feels.

Chapter xxv

POVERTY

Just as in the case of death we saw that there was a pecu¬
liar but close relation between spiritual death (death of self)
and physical death (bodily and mental dissolution) so there is
an even closer relation between spiritual poverty (“ Blessed are
the poor in spirit”) and actual, material poverty (“Blessed are
the poor”). Christ went so far as to assert that for a rich
man, the divine life was next to an impossibility.

“ It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God,”
And when the disciples heard this, they were astonished
exceedingly, saying, “Who then can be saved?” And Jesus
looking upon them said, “With men this is impossible, but
with God, all things are possible.”

Other writers have taken a less extreme attitude; Marcus
Aurelius declares that the good life can be led even by an
emperor. Again in the Saikonlan (^ : ftU$) we read:

The mark of nobility is to have nothing to do with power,
reputation, wealth and rank; but the noblest thing of all
is to have these antf yet be unaffected by them.

m n & m * & # n at z m r* % # u

Confucius, on the other hand, seems to agree with Christ:

To be poor without murmuring is difficult: to be rich
without pride is easy.

fffii-tsi. s m m mS jo

(» + PU T -)*

879

380 2EM IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

for it is the broad, easy road that leadeth to destruction. But
perhaps before we go any farther it would be,as well to define
poverty and riches. By riches is meant superfluity; by poverty,
less than the average man considers enough for comfort and
well-being. We may take the lives of Chomei, Bash6 and
Ryokan as standards of the life of poverty.

Chomei tells us that at the age of sixty he built himself a
one-room house near the river Kamo, a tenth of the size of his
former dwelling-place, where he had lived about thirty years.

I am now approaching my sixtieth year: the swiftly van*
ishing dew-drop, of my life trembles on the very verge of
the leaf: I make myself yet one more dwelling place.

J P k' *) & j© ^ h Z t h o

This new abode on Mt. Hino, dwindling in size with the tale
of his years, was only 10 feet square 1 and under 7 feet in
height. The furniture: a small shrine, with pictures of Amlda,
Fugen and Fudo; on a shelf, some boxes containing poetry
and music; a so, 2 a biwa; 8 straw for a bed; a writing desk and
a brazier; and last, but not least, a window. Outside, the
purple blossoms of the wistaria in spring, the green leaves of
summer; in autumn the voice of the cicada, in winter the wax¬
ing and waning of the snow-drifts.

In such a place there is no need to keep the command¬
ments, for there is no temptation to break them.

ir te 6 6 i U S t th t' *>>

w ft tf w

Since I left the world, I have no envy of gain or fear of

1 In imitation of Yuima’s room

2 A kind of Koto, or long harp.

2 A lute.

POVERTY

381

loss. My life is in the hands of God; it is without desire
or loathing. I am like a cloud floating in the sky, I ask
for nothing, I reject nothing.

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Poetry, music, art, religion — all in the compass of ten feet
square, — what is lacking here? We may perhaps answer,
“ Love of mankind.” In this respect Basho and Ryokan both
fully make up for any such deficiency on the part of Chomei.
See Basho's delicate tenderness in.the poem sent to Etsujin,
when thinking of his journey the year before:

The snows of yester-year,

Which we together gazed upon,

* ‘ Have fallen this year too ?

with the underlying thought that the sameness or difference
of things, is in the eye, the heart, of the beholder.

In varying degrees of insincerity one may find this “love
of a hut” expressed all through English literature, with
Marveirs Thoughts in a Garden , Roger's Mine be a cot beside
the hill. Pope's Happy the man whose wish and care , and so on.
Even Wordsworth, in a late poem ( Ecclesiastical Sonnets, No.
22) says,

Methinks to some vacant hermitage
My feet would rather turn—A beechen bowl,

A maple dish, my furniture should be.

*

This of course is only one of the literary conventions, but years

382

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

before, he had written in A Farewell > when leaving for a two
months' holiday,

Our boat is safely anchored by the shore,

And there will safely ride when we are gone;

The flowering shrubs that deck our humble door

Will prosper, though untended and alone:

Fields, goods and far-off chattels we have none :

These narrow bounds contain our private store

Of things earth makes, and sun cloth shine upon;

Here they are in our sight—we have no more.

This is in the true spirit of poverty. The question now to be
answered is, what *is* the relation between Zen and poverty;
between poetry, religion and poverty ? One answer might be
that poverty is in the long run more simple, more “ livable."
There is a humorous account, at the beginning of Basho’s Oku
no Hosomichi, of how he found his friends’ parting gifts more
of a pain than a pleasure when he set out on his 1500 mile
journey.

The bundle I carried on my thin, bony shoulders was
the cause of my first discomfort on this journey. I had
intended to set off just as I was; however. — a kamiko 1 to •
protect me from the .cold at night, a yukata, 2 a water¬
proof, writing materials and so on - all these things I had
received from my friends as parting gifts, and I could
hardly leave them behind, but they were necessarily a
cause of discomfort and vexation all the way.

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1 Kimono made of white paper, prepared with persimmon juice, and
crumpled soft. *

2 Thin, cotton kimono for summer wear.

POVERTY 3S3

Another interesting example of the “ livableness ” of the life
of poverty is given in the Tsure-zure Gusa

A man should be frugal, avoid all pomp and ostenta¬
tion, own no treasures and desire nothing from the world.
Few of the sages of olden times were wealthy men.

A certain hermit named Kyo-yu owned nothing what¬
ever : even water he drank out of his hand. Seeing this,
someone gave him a bowl made of a gourd. One day,
he hung it on the branch of a tree, but the wind made it
bang about and rattle noisily, so he took it and threw it
away, and drank water out of his hand as before.

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Sometimes the inculcation of poverty may be a concession
to human weakness, which .finds the golden mean so difficult.
Poverty then appears as a kind of universal Prohibition. Con¬
fucius says rightly,

I know why men do not walk in the Way: the clever
go beyond it, the stupid do not reach to it. I know why
men do not understand the Way: the virtuous exceed it,
the vicious fall below it.

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But actually the sweetness and light of the Way of the Mean

384 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

comes from complete, absolute poverty, for as Milton says in
Samson Agonistes,

What boots it at one gate to make defence,

And at another let in the foe ?

Poverty appears again as a form of safety first, a kind of
fire insurance by burning down the house.

He that is down need fear no fall.

From this point of view the hermit’s life is repudiated by Zen,
and Chomei’s life is rather that of Shin than of Zen.

There is something both deeper and simpler about poverty
than the above explanations suggest. Look at a very interest¬
ing poem (interesting, that-is, in this connection, not intrinsi¬
cally,) by Tennyson, called The Lord of Burleigh , which begin s
in a commonplace way enough. The rich man pretends to be
a poor painter, and marries the maiden in the village church.'

“ I can make np marriage present:

Little can I give my wife.

Love will make our cottage pleasant,

And Move thee more than life.”

He then took her to a great mansion and told her it was thei r
home. She had wished to make him happy as a poor man’s
wife, but, though her heart misgave her, she made him a tru e
wife,

And her gentle mind was such
That she grew a noble lady,

And the people loved her much.

But now comes the strange conclusion. After giving birth to
three children, she began to droop and fade, and at last died
from lack of poverty , from the superfluities of life. Her hus-

POVERTY 3SS

band, looking on her, said, “Let her be dressed in the rustic
clothes she wore at her wedding.”

Then her people, softly treading,

Bore to earth her body, drest
In the dress that she was wed in,

That her spirit might have rest.

This illustrates Nerissa's saying:

For aught I know, they are as sick that surfeit with
too much as they that starve with nothing.

Dying for money—it is done every day; but to die from a kind
of horror at the abundance of good things, what is the mean¬
ing of it? It lies, I think, in the fact that poverty means close¬
ness to nature . Man is of the earth, earthy; of the water,
watery; of the air, airy; of the fire, firey; and unless he remains
in the closest possible contact with these elemental things, like
Shelley he beats his luminous wings in the void in vain. Once
this fact is grasped, we understand the true function of all
literature, and especially poetry. The poems of Keats are solid
blocks of poetry, those of Shelley poetical prisms and crystals,
at which we gaze with delight, but those of Bashd and Words¬
worth are windows through which we look with a feeling be¬
yond joy or bliss, at the real world which we tread on, which
we eat and excrete, breathe and grasp in our hands. This is
the meaning of Ryokan's poem:

You say my poems are poetry ?

They are not.

Yet if you understand They are not,—

Then you see the poetry of them!

e*> &

386

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

In other words, “ If you think I am making some pretty poem
for your delectation, you are mistaken and will never see the
meaning of what I have written. Once you realise I am show¬
ing you myself, the nature of things, God, or whatever you
chobse to call it, then, and not until then, you understand the
poetry of my poems/' Wordsworth says (Prelude IV, 150),

Gently did my soul

Put off her veil, and, self-transmuted, stood
Naked, as in the presence of her God.

When the soul is one with the thing, the poem does not, can¬
not stand between them. Longfellow wrote,

Life is real, life is earnest,

and I do not know what he himself meant by these words, but
from the point of view of Zen, it means that poetry is not iambic
tetrameter or what not; it is reality conveyed to us in words,
or rather through words, no, in spite of words, and when “ we
see into the life of things/’ we know that our life is reality, our
life is poetry, and that these three are and always have been
one.

What then is the function of poverty in life, reality, poetry?
Poverty means the closest possible approximation of these
three things which in our ordinary manner of living are sepa¬
rated. The following lines of Stevenson give us a clear idea
of the value of poverty in our relation with nature.

A naked house, a naked moor,

A shivering pool before the door,

A garden bare of flowers and fruit,

And poplars at the garden foot:

Such is the place that I live in,

Bleak without and bare within.

-POVERTY m

To make this earth, our hermitage,

A cheerful and a changeful page,

God's bright and intricate device
Of days and seasons doth suffice.

Maupassant says in Une Vie, speaking of Jeanne’s feelings
after days out on the summer sea,

II lui semblait que trois seules choses 6taient vraiment
belles dans la creation: la lumitre, l'espace, et l’eau.

In the aesthetic realm, see the famous haiku of Ransetsu r

White chrysanthemums,

Yellow chrysanthemums,—

Would there were no other names!

« m I'J M * 0 (I fr 0) Ti (i & < i ft

CommentatoVs boggle over the meaning because they do not
see the desire for aesthetic asceticism (forgive the uncouth
phrase,) both in regard to the things themselves and the names
of them. Wordsworth has a similar thought in the last lines
of Stanzas written in my Pocket-copy of Thomson's “Castle of
Indolence The eccentric man and “ that other Man,"

There did they dwell—from earthly labour free,

As happy spirits as were ever seen.

If but a bird, to keep them company,

Or butterfly sate down, they were, I ween,

As pleased as if the same had been a Maiden-queen.

Again, in Boncho’s haiku.

One long line of river
Winds across

The snowy moor.

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ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE’

you have not got to “ fill in the picture for yourself/* any more
than in Crome’s landscape, Moonrlse on the Yare, which is
similar in spirit.

As for practical life, Patmore says in Legem Tuam Dilexi,

To have nought

Is to have all things without care or thought,

which is in Kikaku’s haiku so magnificently expressed:

The beggar l

He has heaven and earth

For his summer clothes.

More consciously, as a prayer for poverty of spirit, Basho’s,

“Ah, Kankodori, 1

My impermanence!

Deepen thou my solitude.

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The Japanese “sabishisa” has here a meaning very different
from that of the English “ loneliness/* which suggests dreari¬
ness and spiritual discomfort, a solitary condition where it is
impossible to love or be loved. The Japanese word in poetical
usage has the meaning I have been trying to give to the word
poverty. 2

In the following lines by Siegfried Sassoon, the Western
poet approximates very closely to the Japanese in his under-

1 A species of cuckoo.

* This poverty, loneliness, Eckehart calls “ Abgeschiedenheit,” and
in praising it above both Love and Humility and every other virtue, he
says,

Nun streift Abgeschiedenheit so nahe an das Nichts (&, the Void) dass
es zwischen Volkommener Abgeschiedenheit und dem Nichts keinen
Unterschied gibt.

POVERTY 389

Standing of aloneness, though it does not represent the final
state of enlightenment.

ALONE

“ When Tm alone ''—the words tripped off his tongue
As though to be alone were nothing strange.

“ When I was young,” he said, “ when I was young. ..

I thought of age and loneliness, and change.

I thought how strange we grow when we're alone.

And how unlike the selves that meet and talk,

And blow the candles out and say good night.

Alone .... The word is life endured and known.

* It is the stillness where our spirits walk,

And all but inmost faith is overthrown.

In the following haiku of Basho, we see the real thing.

A paulonia leaf has fallen:

Will you not come to me
In my loneliness?

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This was sent to Ransetsu, and expresses of course Basho's
tender heart, and desire for the physical presence of his be¬
loved pupil; but it also conveys, in the original, the meaning
that Autumn is here, the time when communiop and union
with Nature comes almost of itself. If, at this season, it is our
own self which

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,

Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,

we have attained that state of poverty, of loneliness, which
Bash6 invites Ransetsu to share with him. Fellowship with
Nature in all its nakedness Ryolcan portrays in,

390 ZF,N IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

The wind brings

Enough of fallen leaves
To make a fire.

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which Matsumura Keisuke, in his book The Great FoolRyokari 1 ,
suggests is Ryokan’s unconscious alteration, through constant
quotation, of Issa’s

The wind gives to me

Enough of fallen leaves
To.make a fire.

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He further suggests that this slight difference lias a deep
meaning, Ryokan having changed Issa’s subjectiveness into
his own objective attitude. In any case, the meaning of both
is the same as that of Marcus Aurelius when he says,

Nothing happens to any man which he is not formed by
nature to bear,

that is, of course, so long as he receives what happens with
poverty of mind. We receive sensations of pleasure and pain,

But when these effects rise up to the mind by virtue
of that other sympathy that naturally exists in a body
which is all one, then thou must not strive to resist the
sensation, for it is natural: but let not the ruling part of it¬
self add to the sensation the opinion that it is good or bad.

When it does this, the original poverty is lost. Roshi says,

He that studies, gains something every day: he who follows
the Way, loses something every dciy.

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Poverty

m

“ Studies,” means “ collects opinions about things.” In follow¬
ing the Way, we are not divided from them. Thoreau in
Walden , Stevenson in his phrase Travel light!” have a
similar thought, but what Roshi is urging us to lose is such
things as self-respect, our immortal souls, our wish to live, our
pleasure in life, and so on. Of course, we shall get them ail
back again, but changed out of ail recognition. This is the
meaning of Christ's words,

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what
thy right doeth: that thine alms may be in secret, and thy
Father which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly ;

which Suzuki finds antithetical to Zen*> When we write poetry,
Ryokan says, we are not to let the left hand know that the
right hand is writing poetry: this is to be our poverty-stricken,
childish, idiotic state of mind; and then are we not rewarded
openly ? The poem is there for all to see! So it is with the
music of Bach: he never aims at beauty of sound or concord,
he has no purple patches or lucious, soul-fainting passages;
but does not his Father which heareth in secret, reward him
audibly ? So it is in our daily life; our light cannot be hid,
men see it and glorify God.

Let us consider more closely the meaning of the statement
that “ poverty means closeness to Nature.” In the most thril¬
ling, poetical, and profound words of the Bible, Christ says,

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil
not neither do they spin: yet I say unto you that Solomon
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Compare this with,

One day the World-honoured One held up a flower before
the assembled monks on Mt. Grdhrakuta. The whole con-

2EN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

gregation made no response, except the venerable Kashya,
who smiled at Him.

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The important but usually overlooked part of Christ’s short
sermon, is the words “ how they grow.” The point is not the
beauty of the flower, not the beauty of "a Bach fugue but, how
it grows. How does it grow? Neither Christ nor Buddha nor
Bach attempted the task of explaining how it grows, for by
its nature this is for all eternity and in all worlds to come, im¬
possible. Buddha simply held up the flower, Christ held up
the flower, merely adding the words,“Look at it!” Perhaps
Tennyson was thinking of Christ’s words when he wrote.

Flower of the crannied wall.

It may be that Wordsworth remembered them when writing
of the daisy:

Sweet silent creature
That breathest with me in sun and air,

Do thou as thou art wont, tepair
My heart with gladness and a share
Of thy meek nature!

Wither also was struck, not by its beauty, but by its simplicity,
meanness, poverty, “ loneliness.”

From every thing I saw
I could some instruction draw.

And raise pleasure to the height
Through the meanest object’s sight.

By the murmur of a spring,

Or the least bough's rustelling;

By a Daisy whose leaves spread
Shut when Titan goes to bed;

POVERTY

393

Or a shady bush or tree;

She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature’s beauties can
In some other wiser man*

What is this instruction which Nature gives us? Basho says
to his pupil Ensui,

Yield to the willow

All the loathing,

All the desire of your heart.

The so-called 4 figure of speech ’ here is indeed profound. If
we explain it as meaning, ‘ Behave like the willow in not op¬
posing the wind, 1 that is, act according to the circumstances,
it is excellent advice, but the poetry and the Zen have disap¬
peared. Unless you and the willow are one, with nothing be¬
tween you (here is the * poverty,’) unless life is running in you
as freely as in the willow itself, unless you realise that the life
of the willow and your own life are like the palm and the back
of the hand, inseparable and indivisible, you have no under¬
standing of what Basho means here.

Wordsworth gives the counterpart, the other half of the
tally, to “ yield to the willow your likes and dislikes/’ in
Three years she grew in Sun and Shower\ From Nature the
maiden shall receive law and impulse,

And hers the silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things.

The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend.

The willow bends for me, gives her pliancy to me. I yield my
heart to the willow, I give up my life to it. The willow and 1^

m

ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

are one. There is no giving and receiving at all. Life appears
there, in the form of a willow, here, in the form of a man.

There is another saying of Christ and a closely correspond¬
ing one of Buddha, which deserve to be studied here.

Bft I say unto you, Love your enemies and pray for
them that persecute you, that ye may be the sons of your
Father which is in Heaven, for he maketh his sun to rise
on the evil and the good, and sendeth his rain on the just
and the unjust.

The Tathagata recreates the whole world like a cloud
shedding its waters without distinction. lie hai> the same
sentiments for the high as for the low, for the wise as for
the ignorant, for the noble-minded as for the immoral.

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The interesting point here is the reason Christ gives for loving
our enemies. Instead of appealing to the inner consciousness,
he gives a more easily comprehended explanation, namely, that
in so doing we are following nature. But it may be objected
(and this is a point of great importance,) that the poets and
preachers use similes and analogies chosen from the gentler
aspects of nature. Does not the sun scorch to death, and floods
drown the good and bad with equal lack of discrimination ?
Do not the lilies of the field choke one another to death in their
wild struggle for existence? This is true enough, but after all,
not so staggering as it appears. In Zen this double aspect of
life is expressed under the image of a sword, the sword that
kills and the sword that makes alive. Nature is “ red in tooth
and claw,” but so are the beneficient hands of the surgeon.
. What Christ and Buddha are urging upon us is not the cotton-

POVERTY

393

wool, milk and water life of abstract purity; they want us to
live fully at each moment, as it becomes our only possession, to
take no thought for the morrow, to be like Nature, for

Nature with equal mind
Sees, all her sons at play.

This “equal mind” is not indifference. Indifference, enuui,
boredom are specifically human qualities, they are love’s sad
satiety. Lack of self, absolute poverty means you have all
things :

Blessed are the poor in spirit,

For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

If you do not put your self in the way and block the view,
everything appears as it is:

Blessed are the pure in heart.

For they shall see God.

CHAPTER XXVI

ANIMALS

In writing about animals I feel that I am speaking of my
life-line, for I came through Buddhism to Zen by virtue of my
love for them. My love of animals is like Wordsworth’s love
of mountains, Basho’s love of the moon and cherry blossoms,
but above all like Christ’s love for men, for it embraces with¬
out effort or self-consciousness the most snaggle-toothed dogs,
slit-eared cats, snakes, lice and bed-bugs, stopping short un¬
fortunately at the intestinal worms, — but this is only what
Lamb calls imperfect sympathies, due partly to the power of
the association of ideas and partly to insufficient acquaintance
(visual, at least) with the creatures themselves. What I pro¬
pose to do in this chapter is to trace the connection, the living
connection rather than the logical, between the love of sentient
creatures and Buddhism, with its deliverance from evil, by
enlightenment, from the illusion of selfhood, and Zen, with its
abhorrence of hesitation and insistence on undivided, uninter¬
rupted, whole hearted, instinctive action. But before we do
this, let us look first at the position of animals in ancient and
modern thought

The Greek attitude was that of modern times, with the
addition of the sacrificial aspect of animals. Pythagoras, as
is well known, was a vegetarian and taught the homogeneity
of living things. The Romans, on the other hand, looked upon
animals as existing entirely for man’s advantage and treated
them with cruelty, though there were many among the nobler

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Romans who condemned the Games, for example Cicero, Plu¬
tarch, who was a moderate humanist, rejected the argument
that animals were automata and relates several animal anec¬
dotes. In Zoroastrianism, special care of God-created animals
was taught, and animals also were apparently considered im¬
mortal beings. The slaughter of animals was allowed with
an expiatory rite. In Mohammedanism also, kindness to ani-*
mals is preached, and butchers have a formula of excuse, Bism-
illah, in the name of God. It is worth noticing that Baalam's
ass, Jonah's whale, Abraham's ram, and Solomon's ant, are
admitted to the highest heaven.

The Old Testament ignores animals except in so far as
they have symbolic value in. sacrifice. The New Testament is
no better; in fact St. Paul quotes the Law of Moses as saying,

Thou shall not muzzle the mouth of the ox that
treadeth out the corn,

and then asks.

Doth God take care for oxen ? Or saith he it altogether
for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written,

and explains elsewhere that God is not considering the feelings
of cattle, but only reminding us that clergymen and mission¬
aries, who bestow spiritual things on us, should “ reap carnal
things," that is, receive a monthly salary and free house and
coals.

The attitude of Confucius is even more indifferent than that
of St. Paul, as is shown in the following well-known passage:

Shi-k6 wanted to omit the offering of a sacrificial sheep at
the inauguration of the first day of the month. Confucius
said, “Shi, you love 1 the sheep, but I love the ritual."

% <r lQve” here means “ are concerned about,”

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ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

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(tt3L H, t-b)

Also.in the following:

While Confucius was at Court, the Imperial stables were
burnt down. When he returned, he asked, “Was any
v man injured? ” He did not ask after the horses.

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(» »* -m)

But there is a very interesting passage in Mencius which I
quote in full for its intrinsic interest of psychological analysis.
King"Sen of the Kingdom of Sai was speaking of virtue with
Mencius, who said to the King that he had heard the following
stofy of him from Kokotsu, his minister:

The king was sitting on his dais in the Hall when a
man appeared leading a bull past. Seeing this, the king
said to him, “Where are you taking it?'* The man an¬
swered and said, “It is to be used to consecrate a bell.”
The king said, “Let it go, I cannot bear its look of terror;
it looks like an innocent man being led to the scaffold.”
The man replied, “ Are we to omit the consecration cere¬
mony?” The king said, “How can we do that? Use a
sheep instead of the bull.”

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The,king told Mencius that the story was true. Mencius
added that people thought he changed the bull for a sheep
from meanness, and said that this supposition was quite reason¬
able, for, after all, the sheep was just as much to be pitied as
the bull. The king felt rather non-plussed, and suggested that

ANIMALS

perhaps it had been meanness on his part after all, and not, as
he had supposed, feelings of pity for the bull. “No,” said
Mencius, “ You really felt sorry for it.

Your action was a kind of trick of goodness. You
had seen the bull but not the sheep. So the ideal man in
regard to animals, when he sees them alive, cannot bear
to see them die* When he hears their cries of agony, to
eat their flesh is impossib’e. For this reason he keeps far
away from the kitchen.”

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Christ appears to have been almost completely indifferent
to all the vast region that lies between the lilies of the field
and the children of men. The only sentence into which we
can read some consciousness of the existence of other creatures
besides ourselves is,

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of
them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.

But even this ends with,

Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many
sparrows,

which, even if it were true, had been better left unsaid. Never¬
theless it must be admitted that Christianity, by acting upon
the cause (the heart of man) rather than upon the effects
(cruelty to animals) has contributed much towards the de¬
crease of animal suffering and the loving understanding of
their manifold beauty.

The doctrine of “ahimsa,” non-killing, carried to an ex¬
treme by the Jainas, who would not drink cold water because
of the ‘ souls' in it, is found everywhere in the Hinayana texts

of Buddhism, but to a strikingly lesser exteht in the Mahayant,
Sor example in the Hinayana Brahmajala Sutra (%&$$) wft
are told not to kill ourselves, not to teach to kill, nor to find
means for it; not to praise killing, nor look upon it with
pleasure; not to kill by imprecation, nor to give our thoughts
to killing, or contrive opportunities and -means for this sin.
That is to say we are to kill nothing living whatever.

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In the Mahayana sutras, however, such injunctions are com¬
paratively uncommon, and in Zen itself they are unheard-of.
What indeed shall we say of the cat-killing Nansen, especially
selected and held up as a pattern and example in the Mumon •
kan ? So with Kusunoki Masashige’s son before his death in
battle at Shijonawate, when he went to his teacher of Zen,
Myogaku Soshun Zenji, and asked,

When at the cross-roads of life and death, what shall we do?

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the answer was not the Biblical “He who takes the sword shall
parish by the sword,” nor as in the Dhammapada, “ He who
seeks his own happiness in the suffering or death of others
'shall not find happiness in the next world,” (TZtitO)&.&\Z L
40*,' 5 Att, &0>1k

& U (&41*5U fHtt-) but,

Cut off both heads (of relativity) and the sword (of the
Absolute) shines icy against the sky. *

KWANNON.

Nursing its little one beneath a clod, a mother worm speaks:
My bosom of itself is cold, and of itself is dark.

But He that loves the lowly pours His oil upon my head.

And kisses me, and binds His nuptial bands around my
breast,

And says, “Thou mother of my children, I have loved thee,
And I have given thee a crown that none can take away! ”
But how this is I know not, and I cannot know ;

I ponder, and I cannot ponder; yet I live and love!

Blake, The Book of Theh

ANIMALS 401

Yet this also is found in the Dhamntapada: “ If you give up
both victory and defeat, you sleep at night without fear/’ £

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We thus seem farther off than ever from reconciling the warm
love of all living creatures and the chilly trenchancy of Zen.

Animals enter English Literature in the 14th or 15th cen¬
tury with an anonymous poem on the cock. 1 The Nature
peace of Isaiah (“ The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and
the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the lion shall eat straw
like the ox ”) and the beautiful fairy tale of Noah and his ark,
must have had much effect on the minds of men, as also the
animals in the stable at Christ's birth, but to poets the most
attractive was the legend of the comforting of Christ by the
animals of the wilderness. In Christ's Victory on Earth , by
Giles Fletcher (1588*1628) we have the following beautiful pas¬
sages. When Christ knelt to pray, the wild animals rushed to
attack him,

But him their salvage thirst did naught appal,

Though weapons none He had for his defence,

What arms for Innocence but innocence?

For when they saw their Lord's bright cognizance
Shine in his face, soon they did disadvance,

And some unto Him .kneel, and some about him dance.

* * *

Down fell the.lordly lion's angry mood,

And he himself fell down in congies 2 low;

Bidding Him welcome to his wasteful wood.

1 See The New Book of English Verse , p. 65:

1 have a gen til cock
Crowyt me day;

He doth me rysyn erly
My matyins for to say.

2 Salutations.

402 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

♦ * *

All the animals served him in their several capacities ;

If he stood still, their eyes upon Him baited,

If walked, they all in order on Him waited,

And when he slept,-they as His watch themselves conceited*

i

Shakespeare seems to have disliked all animals, especially the
dog, but like many other Elizabethans, for example, Drayton,
had much interest in birds. From the 17th Century, Vaughan’s
The Bird is well worth quotation here:

And now as fresh and cheerful as the light,

Thy little heart in early hymns doth sing
Unto that providence, whose unseen arm
Curb’d them, and cloath’d thee well and warm.

All things that be, praise Him; and had
Their lesson taught them, when first made.

This is the teaching of Zen; that everything,,even ourselves,
had its lesson taught it when first made, that is, when it came
into existence, and that to know what to do we must therefore
“Enquire within.” If you can’t believe this, consider the lilies
of the field, or even the stones:

And though poor stones have neither speech nor tongue,
While active winds and streams both run and speak,

Yet stones are deep in admiration.

Wordsworth himself never wrote a line of more insight than
this “stones are deep in admiration.” It is the very voice of
the stones themselves. Wordsworth only said that to

Even the loose stones that cover the highway,

I gave a moral life,

which is ifideed a dismal failure,

ANIMALS 409

Even so, why did not Christ say, u Consider the rats of the
sewer, how they fight and squeal,” or “Consider the bacteria
of typhus, how they grow and multiply 0 ? Why did not
Buddha hold up, instead of a flower, a cheese rind or an old
boot?

For each enclosed spirit is a star
Enlightening his own little sphere,

Whose light, though fetcht and borrowed from afar.

Both mornings makes and evenings theie

for centipedes, tapeworms, fungus and all the rest. The flowers
and the moon are milk for babes, but when we become men,
we must put aw.ay childish things, and take a look at our po >r
relations as they Jive by Zen all around us. Walt Whitman,
who also has a great deal of Zen scattered through his writings,
says,

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so
placid and self-contained.

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing Jlieir duty to God,

Not one is dissatisfied, no one is demented with the mania
of owning things,

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thou¬
sands of years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

If our attitude to Nature, especially to animals, is false, nothing
can be true to us or we to it. It is the sentimentality, that is*
r the falsity of nature poets, that moves Aldous Huxley to write,
in Wordsworth in the Tropics,

The Wordsworthian who exports this pantheistic wor¬
ship of Nature to the tropics, is liable to have his religious
convictions somewhat rudely disturbed. Nature, under

.404 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITE&AT1/RB'

vertical «un, and nourished by the equatorial rajns, is not
at all like that chaste, mild deity (who presides over the
Gemutlichkeit, the prettiness, the cosy sublimities of the
Lake District.

* * *

The jungle is marvellous, fantastic, beautiful; but it is
also terrifying, it is also profoundly sinister. There is
something in what, for lack of a better word, we must call,
the character of great forests—even in those of temperate
lands —which is foreign, appalling, fundamentally and
utterly inimical to intruding man. The life of those vast
masses of swarming vegetation is alien to the human
spirit and hostile 46 it.

Huxley's criticism of Wordsworth and his followers is just;
they look on only one side of Nature, the birds and insects and
smaller animals, their life in the sunshine of the temperate
zone, utterly neglecting the monsters and swamps of Africa,
India and Equatorial America. This does not come from stay¬
ing at home in England, for Nature is the same- everywhere.

If Nature is as Huxley describes it in the Tropical Zone, it is,
as he himself says, “ even in the Temperate Zone, always alien
and inhuman, and occasionally diabolic." The bacteria and
parasites in our own body are just as fantastic and sinister as
the cobra and the rhinoceros. But Huxley is no less wrong *-
than Wordsworth, or rather more so, and on his own ground, -
for his mistake is mainly a logical one. How does Huxley
know that Nature is "alien," "foreign," "appalling," "inimi¬
cal "? He feels it to be so, no less than Wordsvforth feels that
Nature is our "teacher," and has no right to assert the validity^
of one set of intuitions over another. What we have to do is
to find some larger truth that will include and reconcile the
two apparently opposing and contradictory lesser truths. A
hint of this is given in Huxley’s reiteration of the fearfulness

AKiMalS

46$

&nd horror of Nature. Fear is often another name for hatred.
When Huxley says that Nature is inimical to man, he forgets
how inimical man (Huxley) is to Nature. As pointed out in an¬
other chapter, man complains that Nature does not care for his
sufferings, forgetting that he also cares nothing for the suffer¬
ings of Nature. In'tHe same way, man Ungraciously and un¬
gratefully receives all that Nature gives him, but does nothing
whatever in return. Again, to a man afraid of dogs, that is,
who hates them, a dog is a fearful creature, only waiting for
the chance to fix his teeth into someone’s leg. So with a tiger.
You may say, “ But a tiger really is a dangerous, carnivorous
animal.” S > is a dog, if it is hungry enough, so is your own
brother, if ravenous enough. After all, we have only to read a
page or two of history to see that man is the most ferocious of
all animals.. Plutarch and Gibbon are more terrible to read
than Darwin or Bates. There is no need therefore to go to
the jungles of Africa or the wilds of Borneo to disturb our
minds with thoughts of evil, suffering, death, the struggle for
existence. We are all bathed in it as in an invis ble fluid, we
carry it with us wherever we go. The reason why the Tem¬
perate Zone produces nature poets like Wordsworth and Basho
is a simple one, connected with the “ poverty*” discussed in
the preceding chapter. In the tropics there is so much life
(that is, life and death,) that we can hardly, in both a literal
and metaphorical sense, see the wood for the trees. In the
poem, Black Season was it, Turbulent and Wild, Wordsworth
has thoughts and impressions that could never have occurred
to a denizen of a jungle, and he actually gives thanks for the
“enmity” of all around him.

Stern was the face of nature: we rejoiced

In that stern countenance; for our souls thence drew

A feeling of their strength. The naked trees,

466 zen in English literature

The icy brooks, as on we passed, appeared

To question us: “ Whence are ye? To what end? ”

' The same is equally true of a city, which is only another kind
of jungle, and this is why poets avoid it. It is so full of life
that it takes the_genius of a Dickens, a Shakespeare, tp grasp
it and reveal the poetical and religious meanings with which
it overflows.

The Chinese poets, with the honourable exception of Haku-
rakuten, seldom leave tl^e conventional round of natural ob«
jects,*—the moon, flowers, willows, nightingales, singing-insects
and so on. In Hakqrakuten we have such poems as The Gov -
ernment Bull (ff T)* The bull is hauling sand to spread on the
road so that the hooves of the horse of a Hijgh Official may not
be muddied. No one troubles about the bull, whose neck is
running blood (■'Hfl ifil.) , There is the poem. The

Wild Pheasant (ill®, in which lie compares the lives of the
wild animals with the domestic tines; the chickens and ducks
buy their gift of grain with the sacrifice of their lives.

be Hi ffi m 'i> Hi m « mu

In the Dug and'the Falcon tki&) he rejoices in the freedom of
the falcon in the air, the freedom of the dog lying asleep in
the sun without rope or chain. Zen is freedom, and those who
are free, wish others to be free. Those who love animals and
have “freedom in their love,” wish them to be free. This
comes out again in Releasing a Migrant Goose (WcSkM)* which
some boys had captured on the ice and were selling in the
city; also in The Red Parrot QM)> brought from-Annam
and put in a cage because it was so beautiful and clever. All
kinds of insects interested him, and insect poems are many.
As with the Japanese poets, their voices penetrate deep into the

AKfrMALS 4j&f;“

releases of his soul, not, as in the English poets, drawing hihi
out of himself.

LISTENING TO INSECTS

|

Long is the night: unseen amid the gloom, the. voices of
insects.

It is the gathering rain, the darkness of autumn.

Do they then dread that in my despair I shall sleep my
last sleep ?

Their insistent voices deepen, they come nearer, and yet
more near.

m &

m m m & «i u ^ fk m & m x

m »tt a ffw tt w»f

Hakurakuten seems to haverfelt an unusual, and; if I may say
so, a very un-Japanese sympathy with fishes. In addition to
the poem quoted before, look at the following:

RELEASING FISH

At dawn a servant brought a basket of spring vegetables.

Under the green parsley and bracken were two white-baits;

They uttered no cry but lay with their mouths open as if
gasping pity on each other.

Turning them out of the basket on to the ground, they lay
there more than a foot long, still lively.

Is it to be the fate of the carving-knife and chopping-

board, or are they to be eaten by ants and crickets?

He decides to set them free in the South Lake, and ends with
a playful but note-worthy remark:

Though I bestow this favour upon you, how far I am
from desiring anything in return;

Do not trouble to seek, on my behalf, among the mud and
sand at the.bottom of the lake, for silvery pearls. v

46& - IN tNGUSH LITER ATtffcfi

lit M

mntevrm mmmmm it it if kt *e

ftSOffiF SMttX*

MHMVLm &sLmmm ..

nmwmn s^sfAt >*jiwa»

This is the true attitude of religion, of Zen, of poetry, towards
everything, and especially towards animals: to ask nothing
from them, to give them all the freedom and happiness con¬
sistent with our own existence* *

The typical attitude of Japanese poets may be exemplified
by the following haiku of Kikaku, Bash o’s often intractable,
but here good and faithful pupil.

Creep forward, O snail,

That we may gaze on you

As relish to our wine! *

No theorising about the unity of life, no talk of “ types and
symbols of eternity,” no pretence of liking uninteresting or
disgusting things, no pathetic fallacy; simply the pleasure of
drinking at home in the garden with his friend Yugo, looking
at the snail with its graceful form, its pretty shell and tender
horns. Basho, like Wordsworth and Hakurakuten, was inclined
to the moral side of poetry, and in his well-known haiku of the
cormorants, expresses his sense of the lachrimac rerum:

The cormorant fishing-boat,—

How exciting! - But after a time
I felt saddened. 1 „

J See Miyamori’s An Anthology of Haiku, Ancient and Modern, page
151, for a description of cormorant fishing.

r,: Animals '

Basho does not tell us what made him sad. Was it pity for,
the fish, for the cormorants forced to regurgitate what they*
had swallowed, for the men engaged in £uch a labour of prey¬
ing on the greediness of the birds, or for humanity in its end¬
less desire and craving ? The^simplest and best answer is that
Basho himself did not know. It was /'tears, idle tears/' and
that is alt

Issa’s best known poem,

Do not kill ihe fly:

See how it wrings its hands;

See how it wrings its feet!

♦ r j& * -r %

would seem affected or sentimental in another writer, but Issa
simply means here "Don't kill it; it's alive!” just like you
and* me, as Blake also said. Issa wrote a very large number
of haiku on flies, fleas and lice, not from any affectation or
theory of the sacredness of all life, but for the best of all reasons,
namely, that he knew them so well and so intimately. These
poems are full of humour (for humour is coterminous with life) 1
but entirely'devoid of condescension. He writes of them, not
even as Johnson wrote of his cat Hodge, or Matthew Arnold of
his dog Kaiser, but as equals to himself.

I'm sorry my house is so small,

But practise your jumping,

Please, Mr. Flea!

< i ^

So far from pity being akin to love, they have no connection
whatever, t^ove is union; pity implies separation, or, worst of

i “Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines every¬
where." {Twelfth Night , III, I.)

410 ZEN IN, ENGLISH LI TEXTURE

all, because the self is divided, self-pity. Love makes all things
equal; and here we begin to see the relation of love of animals
to Buddhism and Z6n. An unusually (for Issa) difficult but
very interesting and pertinent haiku is/the following:

Poor louse! I made it creep

Upon the pomegranate that tastes
Of my sweet flesh.

ft

Even with Issa’s own remarks preceding the poem, it still re¬
quires elucidation:

While thinking that crushing lice is a> pitiful thing,
and throwing'them outside and starving them to death
makes a melancholy sight, I suddenly called to mind
Buddha’s instructions concerning a mother-devil.

A 4 ft O 3 /v H £ 0 ^ it (i L < » X H C » T
3 1r 6 4 && {z&tiL S*'o4)f
c *> t ^ o fa & i co 4* ^ t jir o m l t> .

The tradition referred to is this. A certain Mother-devil went
about the country devouring, a la Grendel, the children of
human beings. Hearing of this, Buddha gave the following
counsel. “ Get her son away from her by making him a Bud¬
dhist disciple and she will realise the anguish of losing chil¬
dren. If further she still retains a taste for human flesh, let
her eat pomegranates, which have the same taste as human
flesh.” This same compassion Issa expresses in taking the
louse and putting it on a pomegranate.

Thus we 9ee that love of all living ci*eatures which springs
up naturally in our hearts, unless thwarted bj\jnstruction,
custom, or self-love, is ho more and no less than our Buddha :
nature manifesting itself. Further, love, like knight errantry,

ANIMALS

4ii

equalises^ things, and this equality of all things, the absolute
worth and'goodness of all that exists o* happens, is what Zen
aims to make us realise in a practical, concrete way. It may
' be asked, “ Is it a fact, then, that those who have come to a
fundamental realisation of the truth of Zen, feel a love for all
living creatures, beautiful and ugly, charming and disgusting?.’'
The answer will be, that though Zen gives the mind a general
spring-cleaning, cobwebs and dust still lurk in many corners
and crevices of the mind. Again, as was pointed out before,
to Buddha after his enlightenment, sweet was still sweet and
sour still sour; for Christ also there was “that disciple which
Jesus loved.” The outside of our mind remains full of fears,
prejudices and cravings, yet not the same as before, because
deep down inside there is the consciousness that All is Good
without comparison or difference. Or to put it in another way,
just as the hard horny hands of the young farmer do not be¬
come soft even though he falls in love with the gentle village
maiden, so the man who is insensitive to the affection and
charm of dogs, remains so after his enlightenment. Only, the
use of his hard hands, the use of his hard mind, changes, since
in bot h, self has decreased in quantity and importance, and other
things correspondingly and inevitably increase in value and
significance. What a strange emotion I feel when a man pats
my dog on the head and says, with a smile, “I don't like dogs
very much 1"

«Ha1>Ter xxvit
WORDSWORTH

The change that took place in Wordsworth as he passed
from Zen through Pantheism to Orthodoxy, is almost unparal¬
leled in the history of culture. The three 'periods of course
overlap, but we are able, especially in The Preluded nd The Ex¬
cursion, almost to see the change taking place under our very
eyes. In his earliest years, he tells us,

The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall- rock,

'fhe mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,

Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love
That had no need of a remoter charm
By thought supplied, nor any interest
.Unborrowed from the eye.

This is the true region of haiku. Words are many and the
thing is one, but somehow it has got to be portrayed or sug¬
gested in words,—but as a unity, not after the post-mortem of
thought, not after the dissection of the intellect. As an ex¬
ample of such a haiku we may take Kyorai’s,

“Yes, yes! ” I answered,

But someone still knocked

At the snow-mantled gate.

MS* i t

or Bash&’s, composed at Kyorai’s house,

412

A cuckoo cried!

The moon filters through

The vast bamboo grove.

«a t *> . /j *

Wordsworth expresses an extreme case of this thoughtless,
almost senseless state, in Personal Talk:

To sit without emotion, hope or aim,

In the loVed presence of my cottage-fire.

And listen to the flapping of the flame,

Or kettle whispering its faint undersong.

in these lines we can see Basho sitting in his hut at Fukagawa.
Or another example, reminding one irresistibly of Basho, the
last verse of The Two April Mornings:

Matthew is in his grave, yet now,

Methinks, I see him stand,

As at that moment, with a bough
Of wilding in his hand.

Again, in Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known, Wordsworth
says, as he rode towards the sinking moon,

My horse moved on: hoof after hoof
He raised, anc# never stopped:

When down behind the Cottage roof,

At once the bright moon dropped.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a Lover’s head!

Oh mercy! ” to myself I cried,
u If Lucy should be dead! ”

Wordsworth leaves us with this mystery of the mind of man,
which selects, rejects, remembers, and associates according to
its pwn sweet will. Why did the visitor continue knocking

414 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE;

after Kyorai had answered “ Yes, yes,” and who was he, and
what did he want? Why did Wordsworth’s heart suddenly
contract with unwarranted fear? Why did he remember
Matthew at that particular moment ? What was the connec¬
tion between the voice of the cuckoo and the moonlight that
stole through the leaves of the bamboo ? These questions are
out of place when one considers that the poems are the answers
to them. We can say of these poems what Wordsworth said
of those men wanting the faculty of verse,

Theirs is the language of the heavens, the power,

The thought, the image, and the silent joy:

Words are but the under-agents in their sou’s.

(.Prelude XIII, 271)

They are like the sounds of the coming storm,

notes that are

The ghostly language of the ancient earth.

(Prel. II, 308)

In his early years Wordsworth’s one object was to live

The life in common things—the endless store of things,
Rare, or at least so seeming, every day
Found all about me in one neighbourhood.

(Prel. 1,108)

He perceived with almost painful distinctness the shapes and
forms of the rocks and plants and clouds, and his own char¬
acter was moulcted

By silent unobtrusive sympathies
And gentle agitations of the mind
From manifold distinctions, difference

Perceived in things. 1 (Prel. II, 297)

/

1 See FonnZn des Lebens, Botanische Lichtbildstudien by Dr. Paul
Wolff (Langewiesche), for concrete examples of what Wordsworth means
here.,

415

* WORDSWORTH
When he looked at the lake,

the calm

And dead still water lay upon my mind
Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky,

Never before so beautiful, sank down
Into my heart. {Prel 11,171)

What he perceived was Existence, the existence of all things,
animate and inanimate:

I felt the sentiment of Being spread

O'er ail that moves and all that seemeth still.

But what he perceived was not something outside, something
separated from himself. It was almost as if the object used his
eyes to fierce we itself or as he expresses it,

Bodily eyes

Were utterly forgotten, and what I saw
Appeared like something in myself, a dream,

A prospect in the mind. (Ptel . II* 349)

He could not find a single object in the whole universe, not a
single thing

Whose truth is not a motion or a shape

Instinct with vital functions. [Prel, VIII, 288)

All was Activity, as he looked with

An eye

Which, from a Iree, a^tone, a withered leaf,

To the broad ocean and the azure heavens,

Spangled with kindred multitudes of stars,

Could find no surface where its power could sleep.

i

This reminds us of the Zen simile of Truth as an iron ball
which we cannot take a bite out of. The highest point in
, Wordsworth's youthful directness of insight into the life of

416 ZEN IN ENGL I Stt R A TURK

Nature is contained in the famous lines from There Was A
Boy:,

Then sometimes, in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,

Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received
Into the bosom of the’steady lake.

Farther than this, in regard to Nature, no man can go; but the
problem remains, how’can our bosoms become as a steady
lake, to receive the uncertainties of our human life. That is
to say T we must turn from Nature to Man.

Wordsworth's answer to this question is thoroughly in
accord with that of Zen. Zen says, Act according to your
essence of mind; in the words of the Fifth Patriarch:

Perfect Enlightenment means spontaneous realisation
of your Original Nature.

Wordsworth says,

Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your Teacher.

Zen says, Look within 1 Wordsworth says, Look without! but
there is no more difference here than in the case of Self-Power
and Other*Power. Self-Power is Other-Power, because Self is
Other. Looking at the microcosm is looking at the macro¬
cosm, for one without the other is meaningless. “Where m n
is not, nature is barren,” ‘ Wordsworth makes everything
moral;

WORDSWORTH Mf

To every natural form, rock, fruit or flower,

Even the loose stones ihat cove£ the highway,

I gave a moral life. (PreL III, 130)

Zen takes away from man even that which he hath no.t, his
morality:

“ Forget the difference between a saint and an ordinary
man! *’ said the (Sixth) Patriarch,

# a)

butliere again, if you are not attached to the words, you will
see the identity of the experience, a realisation of

What an empire we inherit
As natural beings in the strength of Nature.

— (PreA III, 193)

.Whether we ascribe morality to man and nature or not, does
not matter, as long as we do not separate them qualitatively.
How is it that Nature, external Nature, can teach us? Clearly,
because of the continuity of the internal and external nature,
so that we see

the parts

As parts, but with a feeling of the whole.

(PreL VII, 735)

As an illustration of this identity of inner and outer we have
Wordsworth’s beautiful lines, describing how, after spending
a night in dancing, gaiety and mirth, he went out and beheld
- the rising of the sun, the waves danting, the mountains shin¬
ing, birds $inging, labourers going forth to work:

My heart was full: I made no vows, but vows
Were made for me.

(PreL IV, 334)

413, ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

In The Tables Turned, Wordsworth asserts, as from his owii
experience, something* that lias upset both the moralists and
the poets:

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

fc Thiais pure Zen, as we may .see if we try to answer the ques¬
tion, “What can a vernal wood teach us?” The answer is,
“ It teaches us! ” This annoys the moralist, who is at a loss
without his book of words. It annoys the poet, because he
dbes not want to be taught morality. In The Excursion , Book
Four, Wordsworth expands this idea of the inarticulate lan¬
guage of animate and inanimate things. The poetic quality
is low and the thought diffuse and thin, but it is worth quoting
in order to attempt to convince intellectually those who have
no intuition of its truth.

For, the Man—

Who, in this spirit, communes with the Forms
Of nature, who with understanding heart
Both knows^and loves such objects as excite
No morbid passions, no disquietude,

No vengeance and no hatred-needs must feel
The joy of that pure principle of love
So deeply, that, unsatisfied with aught
Less pure and exquisite, he cannot choose
But seek for objects of a kindred love
In fellow-natures, and a kindred joy.

In Ruth, Wordsworth shows the effect of tropical nature "to
feed voluptuous thought” in a man without self-control and
of vicious life, but adds, and I think justifiably,

Yet, in his worst pursuits I ween
That sometimes there did intervene

WORI>$^ORTH ^419

Pure hopes of high intent:

For passions linked to forms so fair
And stately, needs must h&Ve their share
Of noble sentiment,

that is to say, even where the effect of external Nature seems
only to debase, it is actually mixed with good.

Now we come to "a more painful part of our study of
Words worth,, that of the ^gradual disintegration of his poetical
character. This was partly due to an inexplicable decrease in
his intuitive powers and corresponding inspiration and out-put
of real poetry, and partly the effect of the introspection and
self-|palysis to which he so rigorously subjected himself. We
can trace, in The Prelude and The Excursion, the growth of a
pantheism, a theoretical interpretation of his original insight,
which ultimately destroys him. lie tells us himself that he
learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth.

The division of man and nature begins when we imagine
things as they ought to be, not as they are.. Wordsworth re¬
cords his disappointment at the sight of the actual Mont Blanc,

.. and grieved,

To have a soulless image in the eye,

That had usurped a living thought.

( Prel . VI, 525)

He talks of how

an auxiliar light
Came from my mind, which on the setting sun
Bestowed new splendour,

This is unfortunately in accord with his (later) peculiar defini¬
tions of the Imagination, In the 14th Book of The Prelude t
he says,

m ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Imagination, which, in truth,

Is but another name for absolute power
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind
And Reason in her most exalted mood.

This, though not very* clear, one can hardly disagree with, but
in a conversation, Wordsworth said,

, " Imagination is a subjective term; it deals with objects
not as they are, hut as they appear to the mind of the poet,”

and this is positively dangerous, opening the way to all kinds
of capricious and fanciful creations out of all relation with
truth. What Wordsworth no doubt means by “objects a^they
are,” is things not worked up i;i the mind of the perceiver, but
in this sense, no such object can be represented at all. Again,
in the Preface to the Edition of 1815, Wordsworth discusses at
length the function of the Imagination. What he says is not
so much wrong as it detestable, as Wordsworth usually is in
his later prose and poetry. He states there that Imagination
is a word

denoting operations of the mind upon those objects, and
processes of creation or of composition, governed by cer¬
tain fixed laws.

He then speaks of the mind, “ for its own gratification,” using
various figures of speech such as metonymy, abstraction,
hyperbole, but actually there is little difference between im¬
agination and fancy in his definitions. I have already given
my interpretation of what are called figures'of speech and will
, now give a definition of imagination as the faculty was ex¬
ercised by Wordsworth himself. It is the power by which we
become so united,—or better, by which we realise our original
unity with persons , things, situations, so completely,—that wq

perceive them by simple self-consciousness . This definition
closply approximates to Wordsworth's own definitions scat¬
tered throughout the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, in which.he
says, for example, of poetry,

Its object is truth . . . carried alive into the heart by
passion: truth which is its own testimony .

The change from this definition to that of seventeen years
afterwards, in the 1815 Edition, is the result of a change of
attitude, to a state of mind which speaks of

Ye Presences of Nature in the Sky

And on the Earth! Ye Visions of the hills!

And souls of lonely places!

.the great mass

Lay beaded in a quickening soul.

The very beginnings of this notion of presences and somethings
and spirits Wordsworth notes in the First Book of The Prelude .
At ten years old even, shades of the prison house of fear and
discrimination had begun to close over the growing boy, for
when he had done something wrong, he says,

I heard among the solitary hills
Low breathings coming after me, and sounds
Of undistinguishable motion, steps
Almost as silent as the turf they trod.

Instead of realising that this feeling was due to the illusion of
separation between himself and nature, the seeds of this fatal
division between man and the outer world, and later, between
God and Nature, were allowed to spring up, until in Tinfern
Abbey (1798) he utters the beautiful lines,

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy

422 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky and the mind of man:

A motion and a spirit that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts,

And rolls through all things.

The loftiness of the thought, the truth of the details, the elo*
quence of the whole, must not blind us to the fact that there is
in this fruit the speck which rotting inward, slowly mouldered
all Wordsworth's poetry. What is wrong with pantheism?
It is not that it is not true, it is rather that when expressed in
words it becomes false; it is that our minds are somehow un¬
fitted to receive it. When we say, “All is God, this book is
God, I am God,” the very form of the thought, of the judge¬
ment, of the sentence, has in it

the little rift within the lute.

That by and by will make the music mute,

And ever widening slowly silence all.

When we say “ This is God," in our minds, the part is divided
from the whole. Becoming aware of this, we assert with
dogged mysticism, “The part is the whole," but in the very
assertion of identity, the fatal separation is irrevocably there.
Thus Wordsworth says, the breach widening,

The immeasurable height
Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,

The stationary blasts of waterfalls . . ; "1 ,- v
The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky.

The rocks that muttered close upon our ears,

Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side
As if a voice were in them, the sick sight
And giddy prospect of the raving stream,

WORDSWORTH

The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens,
Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light—
Were like the workings of one mind, the features
Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree,
Characters of the great Apocalypse,

The types and symbols of Eternity,

Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.

(. Prel . VI, 624)

In 1800 Wordsworth had written,

Jehovah—with his thunder and the choir
Of shouting angels, and the empyreal thrones—

I pass them hnalarmed, ( Recluse , 786)

a passage that is said tc/have upset Blake so much that he fell
ill (the mystic out-mysticised for once!) but in the Fourth Book
of The Excursion (about 1809 or after,) Wordsworth makes full
recantation:

One adequate support
For the calamities of human life
Exists-one only; an assured belief
That the procession of our fate, howe’er
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being
Of infinite benevolence and power
Whose everlasting purposes embrace
All accidents, converting them to good.

Twenty years after, in 1842, this doctrine reached its logical
and imbecile conclusion in one of the Ecclesiastical Sonnets ,
Forms of Prayer at Sea , where we are told that the crew, saved
from shipwreck by God, are right to give solemn thanksgiving
for His mercy (but how about those who were drowned, or
died of thirst in an open boat?) and that English sailors will
always win naval battles if they ask God to assist them.

Suppliants! the God to whom your cause ye.trust
Will listen, and ye know that He is just.

454 2EN IN ENGLISH- LITERATURE

All this kind" of thing comes from the intellectual separation
of God and man and nature, a separation of man from Here
and Now. Wordsworth says,

Our destiny, our being’s heart and home
Is with infinitude and only th&e.

(Prel. VI, 604)

It is not. Take no thought for the morrow, or for infinity
or for eternity. Take no thought for what will happen five
minutes afterwards, one minute afterwards. Blessed are the
poor in spirit, now! Namu Amida Butsu, NOW I

CHAPTER XXVIII

SHAKESPEARE

George Santayana in his Poetry and Religion has a chapter
on The Absence of Religion in Shakespeare.

Eor Shakespeare, in the matter of religion, the choice
lay between Christianity and nothing. He chose nothing.

He depicts human life in all its richness and variety,
but leaves that life without a setting, and consequently
without a meaning.

It will be quite clear to the reader by this time, that Santayana
neither knows what religion is, nor does he understand Shake¬
speare. It is’precisely this type of mind which cannot under¬
stand Bashd. Let me quote, without comment, from two.books
on Japanese Literature. Aston in his A History of Japanese
Literature, tells us of No,

They are deficient in lucidity, method, coherence and
good tas'.e. Still, they are not without charm.

Of haiku,

It would be absurd to put forward any serious claim
on behalf of Haikai to an important position in literature.

... Specks even of wisdom and piety may sometimes be
discerned upon close scrutiny.

Dickins, in his Japanese Texts (2 vols. Oxford,) says,

The moderh literature of Japan, as such, is nearly worth¬
less. Not a line of power or beauty, it is scarcely too much

426 &EN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

to say, has been penned since the last monogatari was
written. 1

To return tg Shakespeare. In the Preface to Bleak House ,
Dickens quotes from one of the sonnets,

My nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.

This is Shakespeare's Zen, his religion; his nature, his self, is
subdued to what it works in, in men and women, in Nature, in
all this mighty world of .eye and ear. We cannot find Shake*
speare's “religion" foy the same reason that we cannot find
Shakespeare himself. This is the meaning of Arnold's

Others abide our question—Thou art free!

We ask and ask—Thou smilest and art still.

Shakespeare is so fluid that he takes the shape of the human
vessel he is poured into, and yet remains himself all the time;
for example in Lady Macbeth’s

I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,

And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.

In Hamlet's cry when Polonius asks him,

‘Will you walk out of the air, my Lord?'

1 Into my grave.'

In Othello's

O lago, the pity of it, Iago!

1 This seems to mean, after the end of the Ileian Period, 1186 A.D.

In Lear’s

£hAk£$I>EA M'

No, no, no life!

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,

And thou no breath at all ? Thou'lt come no more.
Never, never, never/never, never!

—ift such passages we see the Zen of Shakespeare, the thing
as it is, the world as it is. While we also are immersed in such
states of Mind, all the dogmas of religion and rules of morality
dissolve away in the stream of *life. As Bradley says in his
Shakespearean Tragedy, afterwards

we fall back on our everyday legal and moral notions.
But tragedy does not belong, any more than religion belongs,
to the sphere of these notions.

Of course, Zen itself is not enough to make a Shakespeare.
We require also extreme sensibility, and power to express it,
but the absence of self, of prejudice, of moral judgements, is
the prime^&sential. Here again it is worth noting that this
state of Zen, this God-tike condition of mind does not imply
absence of attraction and repulsion either in Shakespeare or
the reader. It only implies lack of condemnation, lack of the
apportioning of praise and blame. Good is good and bad is
bad, but both are necessary—the acceptance of thu|0fe the secret
of Zen, the secret of Shakespeare. If this acceptance is with
the mind only, if it is half-hearted and with reservations, formal
religion becomes necessary to fill up the meaningless blanks
that our cowardice has made. We need a God to interfere,
to rectify the balance, we need a future life to complete the
defects of this one. But while we look at Hamlet or Othello,
while we are Hamlet or Othello, God and immortality are use¬
less encumbrances, not even necessary as stage effects.

If therefore we are asked for the Zen of Shakespeare we

428. 2EN IN ‘-ENGtJSHt;

c^n only point to the plays and say “ There it is! ” as intangible
as Milton’s Zen, which we see reflected in the mind of Satan,
and which rolls through the cadences of Samson Agonistes.
Nevertheless, as Shakespeare, unlike Milton, was unencumbered
with the formal doctrines of the Church, we find all through
his plays, references explicit and implicit to the acceptation of
life, the freedom of selflessness, the equality of all things and
all men and all occasions, the here-ness and now-ness of Heaven
and Hell.

One of the most significant speeches in A Midsummer
Night’s Dream is Helena’s

Things base and vile, holding no quantity,

Love can transpose to form and dignity:

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind;

And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.

Zen means looking with the eye, the “quiet eye” of Words¬
worth, the eye of him “ who saw life steadily and saw it
whole,” of Arnold. “ Looking with the mind ” means looking
through the distortions and discriminations of the intellect,
and indeed the whole play is an exposure of the absurdity of
Lysander’s proposition,

Hie will of man is by his reason swayed,

the fact being the precise opposite. Puck says, in amused
surprise at both the theories and practice of human beings.

Lord, what fools these mortals be,

but Theseus, speaking for Shakespeare himself, sees deeper in*
to this folly and gives the final word:

Lovers and madmen .. . apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.

SHAKESPEARE

m

When we have some understanding of Zen, ordinary phrases
of Shakespeare become full of meaning, and profounder ones
almost intolerably deep. For example, Cordelia says to her*
father,

It is no vicious blot, or dishonour’d step

That hath deprived me of your grace and favour;

But even for want of that for which I am richer, —

A still-soliciting eyk.

We do zazen, not to get anything, but to throw away all we
have and to throw away even the idea that we are throwing
something away. “ A stilLsoLciting eye.”' This is the precise
opposite of Wordsworth’s “a quiet eye”; it is the disease of
the mind, to be always, incessantly, even in our dreams, de¬
manding and desiring. When Lear gradually begins to realise
that his attitude to his daughters should have been of a piece
with that towards nature, he cries,

I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness;

I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children.

You owe me no subscription,

and when he recovers from his insanity, brought on by the
strength of his demands upon a world from which we are to
ask nothing, he says meekly to Cordelia, ^

If you have poison for me, I will drink it.

There is the same attitude of mind in Edgar’s

Men must endure

Their going hence, even as their coming hither:

Ripeness is all . .

94 Men must endure,” this is stoicism, but “ Ripeness is all^ is
a word of Zen; one can hardly get one’s intellectual teeth into
There is a similar passage in Hamlet\ beginning, in the

430 ZEN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

same way, with the relative and ending with the absolute.
Hamlet says of death, not long before his own,

If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come,
it will be now; if it be not n&w, yet it will come:

The readiness is all.

But “Ripeness is all” goes deeper. All we can say of it is that
Edgar understood it at the moment he uttered the words, and at
some moment or other we may do the same and repeat them.
In King Lear we have the following:

Lear: Dost thou call me fool, boy ?

Fool: All thy other titles thou hast given away; that
thou wast born with.

Kent: This is not altogether fool, my lord.

If only we can realise that we are born fools, if only we can
attain to this state of absolute foolishness, where everything
is good, we shall be like Soshi’s drunkard, who when he falls
out of a cart, though he injures himself, is not killed, because
he is not thinking of life and death, hope and fear, and thus is
in a spiritual condition of security. It is Lear’s “cleverness”
that gets him and everyone else into trouble, but in compensa¬
tion, how many things he learns and teaches us by his experi¬
ences. He finds that

When the mind’s free,

The body’s delicate,

that is to say, when we think about ourselves, we are deeply
conscious of our physical pains and pleasure, but if we forget
ourselves, the body too, becoming one with the mind, is hardly
aware of its pain and pleasure, cold and heat. How t much our
happiness depends upon the condition of our minds, is shown
also in what Macbeth sajfs,

SHAKESPEARE

Present fears

Are less than horrible imaginings.

Imagination, “ looking before and after,” increases our distress
a thousand-fold, and though it may offer us a doubtful joy for
the future, blinds us to the present good. Again, Lear says,

The art of our necessities is strange,

That can make vile things precious.

The absolute value of things is infinite; our minds, which
change according to our circumstances, that is, our necessities,
decide that things are vile or precious. Thus a man

Must make content with his fortunes fit,

For the rain it raineth every day.

The whole play of Macbeth is a dramatisation of Emerson's
Essay Compensation, of the truth that justice is always done,
instantly and irrevocably.

He that hateth his brother is a murderer.

The wages of sin is death.

The Kingdom of God is within you.

These are the words written over the portals of the Hell in
which Macbeth and Lady Macbeth writhe in anguish through¬
out five acts. Goethe says:

Beharren Sie nur dabei und halten Sie im mer a n der Ge-
genwart fest. Jeder Zustand, ja jeder Aug?!TWf@ft ist von
unendlichen Wert, denn er ist der Reprasentant einer
ganzen Ewigkeit. (Gesprache mit Goethe, 1823)

In Richard III we see Zen at work; no hesitation, no self-
deception,

lhy school days frightful, desperate, wild and furious,
Thy prime of manhood daring, bold find venturous,

; ‘«32 2.EN- IN fiNGllSH

but there is something' wrong somewhere; what is it? Richard
has separated himself from the rest of Nature, and in Words«
worth's phrase, we watch him

to Nature's self

Oppose a deeper nature, (Prel. XIII, 200)

Thus, at the end of the play, he himself, for all hiscourage t
begins to whine:

I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;

And if l die, no soul shall pity me:

He does not undersfand the true independence, loneliness,
poverty, which comes from complete union with nature,
with humanity.

In Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare writes.

Were man

But constant, he were perfect: that one error
Fills him with faults..

This is the secret of the understanding of the character of
jago, whose “motiveless malignity" puzzles the critics. It is
.no more difficult to understand Iago than any other freak of
nature, such as a benevolent tiger; it is simply a question^
constancy, of perfection. Iago is Hot so much too bad, as too
good to be true. He is “der Geist der stels verneint.” His
constancipprfiwiWessness, comes from his following Poloniu 3 *
advice, but mistaking “ self " for his own character:

to thine own self be true
And it must follow, as the night the day.

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

A.

He is true to himself and therefore to others, in causing the
greatest amount of unhappiness to the greatest number o£

SHAKESPEARE 4 $$

, '

jieople. There are, however, two flaws in this philosophy of
life: fifst, that in this infernal utilitarianism, oneself also counts
as one, and unhappiness, like curses, comes home to roost.
Second, that just as, paradoxically, happiness comes-from for*
getting oneself and making others happy, so not less paradox¬
ically and not less truly, pain comes ultimately from the plea¬
sant task of inflicting pain. In other words, the universe is
not, as Arnold and Hardy thought, of “equal mind” in the
senge of being dispassionate in the matter of good and evil,
truth and falsehood. w The scales are weighted, though ever
so lightly, on the side of goodness and truth. Were this not
so, how could we say, Follow nature,” “Know thyself”?
Zen would become simply a paiticipation in the Universal
Suicide.

It is painful to watch Prof. "Bradley floundering about in
*his* endeavour to justify our admiration of Iago’s Zen. He
quotes Henry V:

There is some soul of goodness in things evil
Would men observingly distil it out,

h*(t then shows he does not understand this, by pointing~out
that Iago is qot wholly bad. Shakespeare is not saying here
what he says in All's Well that Ends Well,

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill
together.

He is not saying that we are all partly good and partly bad.
There needs no poet to come from heaven to tell us this. He

i Emeison, m Unity .

A spell is laid on sod and $tone.

Night and day were tampered with,

Eveiy quality and pith
Surchaiged and sultry with a power
Tliat works its will on age and hour.

434 ZEN IN ENOUGH

is saying that “ there is a soul of goodness in things evil.”
Ripeness is all, directness is all. In both good and evil there
is Goodness, if only men can forget their praising and blaming
and see it as it flows, in its activity. 1 Let us admit it, Iago Is
inhuman, just as “gentle Jesus meek and mild” is inhuman,
but not therefore impossible. * But the constancy of Iago in
evil is Goodness, just as the Satan of Milton is bad by his
loyalty to his comrades and pity for his victims. It is only the
simple but far-reaching fact that Goodness is on the side of
goodness rather than badness, that is t<H!&y, the fact that evil
in its own nature destroys itself,—that makes Iago a failure.

Shakespeare's profoundest thought about his own life is
expressed m what Masefield calls “the noblest of his sonnets.”

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,

Fool'd by these rebel powers that thee array.

Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth,

Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost, having so short a lease.

Dost thoi^upon thy fading mansion spend ?

Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,

Eat up thy charge ? Is this thy body's end ?

Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss.

And let that pine to aggravate thy store;

Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;

Within t$e fed, without be rich no more:

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,

And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

The last lines, though in the witty Elizabethan manner, show
Shakespeare's clear apprehension of the Zen truth that eternal

1 Cp. what Friar Lawrence says in Romeo and Juliet.

For nought so vile that on the earth doth hve
But to the earth some special good doth give;

Nor aught so good, but, strained from that fan use.

Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,

And vice sometimes by action dignified.

SHAKESPEARE' 433

life is to be gained by “feeding on death,” that is, destroying
death. How? By dying to ourselves once and for all, “sett¬
ing hours of'dross,” thus entering into a timeless and self-less
existence," terms divine.”

*

In conclusion, let us .say that Shakespeare had a religion,
a religion which could ask and answer the question which
Macduff asked, when his wife and children were all murdered
at one fell swoop:

Did heaven look on,

And would not take their part?

What is the answer to the question? It cannot be given ill
Yes, or No, because as the question is understood by most
people, it has the same form as, “Have you stopped beating
your wife yet?” But you may say, “You are only equivocat¬
ing: answer the question, does Heaven care for us or not?”
The answer is the plays of Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Mac¬
beth, for when we are watching or reading the plays, and even
for a short time afterwards, before the glow has died away, we
know the answer But4t is not Yes, and it is not No*

INDEX

INDEX

Addison, 160

Address to the Scholars of the Village
School, 331
Adonais, 83, 329
Advancement cf Learning, 2
Affliction, 239
Aherne, Owen, 55
Alice tn the Looking Glass, 2
Alice m Wonderland , 66, 196, 246
AHingham, Richard, 191
Airs Well that Lnds Well, 443
Alone , 389

Alphonso the Wise, 94
Also Sprach Zarathustra, 284
Aime), 367
A m Mttternacht, 35
Among All Lovely Things , 358
Ananda, 127

Ancient Manner, 160, 247
Animal Tranquillity and Decay, 378
Anna Karenina , 43,192, 253
Anonymous 17th Century Poem,
128

Answering a Question in the Moun¬
tains, 46

Anticipation, 7 he, 2
Anthology cf Haiku, 408
Antony and Cleopatra, 83, 298, 362
Apo l ogy for Smectymnns, 264
Aqumus, Thomas, 89, 233
Ariel, 37
Aristotle, 41, 56

Arnold, Matthew, 41, 43, 81, 87, 89,
94, 97, 99,100, 173, 182, 212, 229,
263, 323,333, 395, 409, 429
A Slumber did my Spirit Seal, 349
Aston, 425

As Ye Came from the Land, 98
Atsumori, 48
At the Bay, 330
At the Seaside, 291
, Auguries of Innocence, 279
August Midnight, 343

A unite’s Skirts, 360
Aurora Leigh, 1

Babbit, 199

Bach, Johann Sebastian, 95, 109,
166, 181, 379, 391, 392
Bacon, 2, 64,106,167,254, 260
Bailey, 7
Bam, Dr, 158
Baishitsu, 228
Balfour, Graham, 63
Bard, The, 165
Barton, Bernatd, 87 _

Basho, 5, 14, 29, 39, 47, % 58, 73,
74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 146, 148, 149,
187, 190, 216, 217, 220, 221, 2§7,
241, 243, 265, 288, 302, 338, 339,
350, 357, 358, 361, 366, 368, 372,
381, 382, 385, 389, 408, 413
Basho, (Korean priest), 180
Baso, 108,109, 111, 328
Battle of Malden, 264
Bayen (Baen), 246, 270
Beatrice, 291
Beerbohm, Max, 188
Beethoven, 12, 35, 50, 95,192
Beowuf, 98
Berry, Stirling, 30
Biographta Litterana, 365
Bird, The, 402
Black Season Was It, 405
Blake, William, 12, 52, 61, 63, 86,
91, 92, 115, 158, 159, 162, 163,
168, 208, 237, 267, 295, 305, 3l6,
318, 319, 326, 337, 338, 354, 363,
423

Bleak House, 20, 116, 273, 279, 288,
426-

Blood of Christ, 234
Bokushu, 323 *

Boncho, 387
Borderers, The, 115
Boswell, 299

m

*40

INDEX-

Bradley, 427,433
Brahma, 213, 250 •

Brahmajala Sutra, 400
Bridges, Robert, 172,182, 332
Browning, Mrs., 80, 229
Browning, Robert, 80, 83, 92, 305,
318

Bryant, 97
Bu, Emperor, 79, 90
Bucket, Detective, 288
Buddha, 56, 68,76,84,107, 124, 151,
274,346, 391, 391,403, 410
Buddha-Nature, 23
Buddhism (compared to' Christi¬
anity), 355
Buddhist Bible , 25
Buddhtst Philosophy and its Effects,
etc, 59

Burntn&^iabe, 232
Burnouf, 127
Bums, 26,154
Bushido, 28, 98

Buson, 38, 39, 73, 188, 219, 245
Byron, 34, 55, 72, 80, 87, 100, 126,
152, 199

By the Ionian Sea , 112

Caesar, 41, 52, 346, 347
C am, 200
Campaneus, 142
Candide, 94
Carker, Mr, 292
Carlyle, 68, 70
Carus, Paul, 25,127
Characteristics of a Child Thee
Years Old , 352

Charge if the Light Bhgade, 185
Chaucer, 74, 82, 87, 212, 229
QiesteHon, 238
C hildhood, 363

Child's Garden of Verses, 359
Chokei, 79

Chomd, 1,26,118, 380
Christ, 8, 11, 12, 27, 32, 36, 41, 51,
52, 69, 72, 77, 79,.85, 89, 103,105,
107, 109, 110, 117, 121, 124, 127,
154, 157, 162, 178, 180, 185, 192,
207, 214, 246, 255, 274, 275, 282,
283, 292, 321, 333, 344, 345*354,
356, 375, 379, 391, 394, 395, 399,<
403,411

Christianity and Buddhism, 30
Christ's Vtctory on Forth, 401
Cicero, 334, 372
Clare, John, 20, 74, 221
Claude, 22
Cleanthes, 71
Cleopatra, 36

Coleridge, 32, 34, 82, 92, 160, 228,
247, 359 365
Collar, 'l he, 271
Compensation , 83, 431
Comus, 2

Confucius, 11, 20, 24, 62, 143, 159,
163, 228, 297, 305, 312, 313, 322,
311, 337, 34% 331, 379, 383, 397,
398

Conversation <? with Goethe , 3, 6, 60,
192, 233 265, 273, 431
Cordelia, 129
Corsair, 7 he, 100
Coventry Patmore, 100, 176, 388
Cowper, 101, 214, 228
Crabbe, 202
Ciasbaw, 213
Crosse, 7 he, 183
Cronch, Mr, 129
Crome, 388
Ciows at 7 wilight, 45

Daffodils (Wordsworth)^ 212, 216,
221 359

Daffodils (Herrick) 156
Vaimutyojukyo, 239
Dai O Kokushi, 146,151
Daisy, 'the, 190, 392
Dansui, 356

Dante, 12, 35, 71, 103, 106,124, 142,

94.1 9Q9

Darkling 7 brush, 343
Daruma, 28, 68, 179, 90, 99, 118, 200
Darwin, 314, 405
David Copperficld, 72
Davies, William, 56, 148, 173, 220,
360

Day cf Judgement, 249

Death and Elizabethan Tragedy , 329

Dejection, 82

De Senectute, 372

Desdemona, 296, 297,298

Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf, 369

Dhapimapada, 111, 125,274,400,401

441 *

Diamond Sutra, 25, 27, 282, 289,
322,445
Dtary Habit, 81

Dickens, 3, 7, 20, 30, 43, 55, 56, 72,
101, 113, 116, 279, 280, 296, 367,
406,426

Dickenson, Emily, 295
Dickms V,424
Dives and Lazarus, 161
Doctrine of the Mean , 20
Dog and the Falcon, 406
Dogen, 1

Dombey and Son , 101, 275, 292, 296

Don Juan , 34, 126,199

Donne, 78,183

Don Quixote, 196

Drake, Francis, 209

Drayton, 402

Dream cf Gerontius, 168

Drummond, William, 238

Duthuit, 57

Dwight Goddard, 25

Dyer, 98

Each and All , 172
East London , 262
• Ecclesiastical Sonnets , 381, 423
Lckchart, 75, 111, 114, 223, 226, 262
Eckermann See Conversations
unth Goethe
Edgar, 429

1 ducatton of Nature, 349
Eka, 99,118
Ekai, 260
Ektkyo, 279

Emerson, 3, 23, 59, 72, 83,91,100,
109, 152, 166, 172, 175, 203, 213,
220, 249, 252, 253, 254, 258, 290,
356, 357,375, 431, 433
Empedocles on I tna , 96,173, 395
E Myo, 352' /

English Rhetoric and Composition,
158

Engo, 62,326, 344
Eno, 118, 120, 124, 160, 179, 201,
252, 268, 320, 417
Enriched Enlightenment, 97
Epsui, 393
Epictetus, 107
Essay on Shakespeare , 188
Etsujin, 381

Evensong\ 359

Everlasting Mercy , 191, 243^
Excursion , The , 214, 241, 284, 331;
332, 372

Faerie Qu$ene, 290
Faith , Half-Faith and No Fatih aL
All, 292

Farewell , A, 382
Fatherhood of God, 351, 353
Fifth Patriarch, 27, 416
£ lfth Symphony, 50
Fischer, J, 369 *

Fitzjerald, 94,167
Flaming Heart, 126
Fletcher, Giles, 401
Flower in the Crannied Wall, 67,392
Fly , The , 158
Formen des Lebens, 414
Fountain, The , 288, 375
Four Statements of the Zen Sect,
66, 344

Freedom, 12, 50, 174, 282, 285,298,
305, 334, 406
Freud, 7,176
Friend of Man, 220
Fiost, Robert, 80
Frost at Midntght, 229
Yu Ketsu, 73, 320

Gamp, Mrs, 9, 53, 54, 56, 335
Garden Seat , 77
Georgias Leontmus, 56
Gesprache mit Goethe See, Con¬
versations with Goethe
Giibey, Thomas, 233, 237'-
Giles, 46, 47, 300
Gissmg, 112

Goethe, 2, 3, 36, 60, 107, 124i 192;

196, 233, 238, 265
Golden Rule, 351
Golden Treasury, 63
Gospel of Buddha , 25,127
Government Bull, 406
Grace, doctrine of, 99
Grand Duke Charles Augustus, 2$5
Gray, 47,166
Great Fool Ryokan, 390
Great Learning, 62
Great Supper, 162
Green Linnet, 357

m

INDEX

Gummidge, Mrs. 72 "

^Gutei, §6

Hakkyo-i * See Hakurakuten
Hakuin Zenji, 35,190, 201, 327
Hakurakuten, 44,141,148> 301, 406
Hamlet, 37, 41, 44, 83, 95,140, 142,
167, 191, 253, 275, 277, 282, 298,
3£9, 426

Happy the man, 381
Happy Warrior , 106
Hard Times , 113
Hardy, 77,335,343,433
HazUtt, 87,188
Hegel, 85, 144,175, 176
Heine, 153

Hektganroku , 51, 61, 62, 66, 76 79,
80, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 182,
258, 269, 294, 316, 318, 324, 325,
326, 328, 340
Henderson, 217
Henley, 83
Henry V , 118, 433
Heracleitus, 195

Herbert, George, 7& 83, 12b, 182,
234, 239, 249, 255, 26S, 271
Hermann, 122, 253
Herrick, 156

Htstory of Japanese Literature, 425
Hofuku, 79
Hogen, 61

Hojoki, 1, 26,118, 195, 375
Hokukyo See Dhammapada
Hokushi, 103
Holy of Holies , 238
Homer, 213
Hood, 163, 237
Horace, 334
Hugot Victor, 234
Human Life's Mystery, 229
Humour, 56,187, 409
Humour of the Public, 188
Huysmans; 68
Huxley, Thomas 94
Huxley, Aldous, 334, 403
Hyakiyo, 74, 78

Iago, 297, 433
Idiot Boy, 97
I Dye, Alive, 234
Ikkyu, 171

II Pe$semo, 165
Imagination, 420
Importunate Friend, 162
Inferno, The, 12, 70,142
Inge, 60, 170, 213
In Memortam , 96
Inoue Shuten, 248
Inscribed* on the Believing Mind*
See Shtnjmmet
Invictus , 93
Isaiah, 163,191
Isan, 108
Issho, 187

Issa, 75, 91, 104, 107, 158, 159,187,
219, 282, 356, 360, 390, 409, 410

James, William, 11,175

Japanese Texts, 425

Jefferies, Richard, 226

Jelleby, Mrs, 20, 276

Jenseits von Gut und Bose, 23, 209

Jesus See, Christ

Jmshu, 319

Johnson, Dr. 3, 55, 86,159,185, 291,
299, 304, 368, 309
Jonson, Ben, 328
Journey to the Western Islands, 3
Joshu, 23, 108, 318 320, 321
Juliana of Norwich, 99, 118
Julius Caesar. See, Caesar

Kanzan, 266
Kashin, 116

Keats, 5, 30, 31, 48, 65, 66, 67, 74,
80,104,155,158,163,167, 222,385
Kegonkyo , 118
h mg John, 154,295
Kikaku, 157,188, 219,244,388, 408
Kipling, 127

Kongokyo. See^Piamond Sutra
Kurata, 323

Kusunoki Masashige, 400
Kutsugen, 300
Kwannon, 36,124
Ktvannonk j o, 108
Kyogen, 42, 37
Kyorai, 412

Lady Barbara , or the Ghost, 202'
Lafcadio Hearn, 285,287,341

44&

INDEX

Lamb, Charles, 55^ 56, 87, 92, 221,
396

Laima* 167
Landor, 81
Laotse, See Roshu-
Last Supper, 51

Last Words to a Dumb Friend, 335
Latimer, 209
La \ita Nuova , 242
Leech gatherer, 374
Lear, King, 34, 44, 191, 253, 275,
283, 367, 427,429
Legem Tuam Dilexi , 388
Legge, James, 159
Lessing, 192

Lie Thee Doun Oddity , 129
Life of Reason, 175
Lines Written in Eatfy Spring , 241,
246

Li Po. See Ritaihaku
Lt Po , the Chinese Poet , 46
L'Isle d’Adam, 68
Listener, 7 he , 129*

Listening to Insects , 407
Little Boy Lost , 354
Litf/e Dornt, 367
Li/ffe GiW, 354
Lockhart, 209
London (Blake) 115, 280
Loneliness, 388, 392
Longfellow, 386
Lord of Burleigh, 384
Loss in Delay, 231
Love, 249 %

Love, 274-6

Lovelace, 86, 113,285, 298
Love's Labours Lost, 305
Lucfifer, 4.2
Lucy poems, 212
Lupin, Mrs 9
Lycidas, 88, 165
Lyiy, 11

Lyrical Ballads, 421

Macbeth, 29, 44, 92, 154, 190, 191,
298, 371, 431, 435
Maggie, 367 *

Mahakasyapa, 151
Mahomet, 106,326
Mallarm£, 68
Man pith a Noe, 165

Mansfield, Katherme, 330,254
March Hares , 57
Marcus Aurelius, 108,379,390
Margaret , 253
Mark Tapley, 8, 276
Marlowe, 35

Marriage of Heaven and Hell , 363
Martin Chuz 2 lewit, 7, 30, 53,113
Masefield, 243
Master and Man, 105
Maupassant, 387 v
Measure for Measure, 36, 329, 347
Meisetsu, 38

Mencius, 20, 312,352, 398
Mephistophiles, 267
Merchant of Venice, 161, 385
Mercutio, 191
Meynell, Alice, 190
Michael , 43, 212, 239, 363, 367
Michael Angelo, 7 %

Midsummer A ight's Dream , 14,428
Might is Right, 236
Milton, 2, 34, 88, 98, 164, 165, 174,
229,263 ff ,428, 434
Mine be a Cot, 383
Miyamori, 247, 408
Mondo, 189, 251

Montaigne, 143, 223,328, 330,334
Moonrtse on the Yare, 388
Moritake, 173

Mother Hubbard's Tale, 295
Mother's Return, 366
Mozart, 36
Mu, 109

Mumonkan , 21, 23, 51, 56, 73, 75*
99, 110, 180, 184, 205, 318, 3%
326, 327, 391, 400

Nansen, 32,116, 321, 327, 400
Nash, 63, 65
Nature, 175

Natural Law in the Spit dual World,
258

Nerissa, 385
Nero, 12

Nerval, Gerard de, 63, 69
Nettleship, R.L, 212
New Book of Eng ish Verst, 401
Newman, 168

Nietzsche, 23, 35,209, 284, 336

Nikita, 105

INDEX

dco, 39
28,425

gi, General, 324
t that it matters, 81
yes, Alfred, 82

aku, 53,108
ata, 46

e After Easter , 64
e on the Intimations of lmpior -
ahty , 43, 176,194, 365
k on the Spring ; 47
’<? to a Grecian Urn , 48,155, 259
fe to a Nightingale 65,163
le to Autumn , 104, 155
le to Duty , 37, 87, 95, 212
to the West Wind, 160
nnaru, 22
r Boldness , J06

* Mat rtagc and Single Life, 254
f the Blessed Sact ament of the
Aulter, 235
shi-Yoshio, 200

no Ho%omichx, 14, 382
Id Cumberland Beggar, 376
liver 1 wist, 3
man, 213
mtsura, 173

ngmal Enlightenment, 97

rig in of Species, 97

thello, 41, 44, 162, 253, 282, 296,

304, 426

xfard Book of Mystical Verse, 68,
76, 213

amting bamboos, 57
Willow, 172
ara'Tfies of Christ, 161
7 aradise Lost , 34, 95
armeneides, 194
3 aradtso, 35, 38,103, 106
’ass&caglia, 181
*ater, 180

^atmore. See, Coventry Patmore
5 aul, St, 42, 51, 77,* 120, 122, 170,
174, 228, 241, 255, 296, 321, 326,
347 397

Pecksniff, 7, 86,113,196
Personal Idealism , 60
Personal Talk, 413
^ter Bell,2l

Placards, 106

Pickwick, Mr, 197

Pilate, 32, 297

Pity and Love, 409

Platform Sutra. See, Rokusadankyo

Plutarch, 335, 397, 405

Poe’s Purloined Letter, 128

Poets Epitaph, 167, 183

Po Chu*i. See, Hakurakuten

Poetic Experience, 233, 237

Poor 1 hmg, 9

Pope, 88, 99, 225, 264, 381, 389
Powys, 3 .V , 129

Prelude, 7 he, 22, 102, 171,356,387,
Chapter XXVIi
Presentiments , 373
Priest and his Dtsciples, 323
Prodigal Son, 162
Prometheus Unbound, 86
Proverbs of Hell, 305
Ptolemy, 94
Puck, 37
Pulley, The, 268
Purity, 119
Pythagoras, 396

Ransetsu, 387, 389
Rasselas , 185, 299, 304
Reader, The, 12

Reading the Book of the Seas antf
Mountains, 44
Recluse, The, 284
Red Parrot, 406

Releasing a Migrant Goose, 406

Releasing Pish, 407

Religious Mustngs, 228

Resolution and Independence, 115

Retreate , The, 362

Revelation of Divine Love, 99

Reverie of Poor Susan, 156

Rtchard II, 203

Richard III r 431

Rikeisho, 256, 281

Rimbaud, 68

Rmzai, 53,108

Ritaihaku, 44, 45, 46

Roast Pig, 221

Robinson Crusoe, 22

Rogers, 381

Rokusodankyo , 120, 124, 145, 160,
252, 262, 319, 352

ikMIt

Romeo and Juliet 434
Rongo, See Confucius
Rood. The, 232

P A tut t-fi 1QQ ^

Mi, 75, Ml, 194, 248, 255, 281,
304, 339,347, 352, 368, 390
Rotsu, 338

Rubaiyat, The, 94,167
Rubkin, 304
Rlissel, Bertrand, 104
Ruth, 34,212, 418

Ryokan, 159, 298, 363, 367 ft, 385,
390

\jRyuge, 325

Sacred Books of the East,[25

Satkontan , 21,299, 379

Saimaro, 244

Samaritan Woman, 127

Samson Agontstes , 384

Sancho Panza, 196

Santayana 75, 213, 425

Saturn Primer, 263

Sassoon, Siegfried, 389

Satan, 264

Schubert, 36

Search , The , 102

Second Patriarch. See, Eka

Seibi, 80

Sekiso, 326, 341

*Sekito, 115

Self Reliance, 100, 356

Seppo, 318

Shakespeare, 14, 36, 37, 43, 44, 52,
55.56,64, 68,74,76, 78, 83, 92 96,
99, 101. 106, 118, 124, 140, 142,
154, 186, 187, 190, 203, 212, 229,
285, 329, 346, 362, 402, 306
Shakespearean Tragedy , 427
Shaw, Bernard, 95,170
Shiki, 74, 76, 80, 220
Shikotei, 66

Shtnjmmet , 84, 147, 150, 280, 290,
318

Shinran, 117, 267, 323
Shoyoroku, 278

Sick Man and the Fireman , 184
Stddartha, 122, 253
Stnkmg Ship, 9
Sixth Patriarch. See, Eno
Skimpole, Hafbld, 273, 28$

m

Skylark, The, 155*342
Small Celandine, 373
Soctety and Solitude, 32
Sodo, 186

Song of Solpmon, 73
Sosan ^ee, Shwjmntet
Soshi, 41, 67, 348, 431
Sotoba Komachi , 203? 261
Southwell, Robert, 231
Sower, the Paiable of the, 162
Spencer, 329
Spenser, 47, 290, 295
Spinoza, 128,194, 326, 334
Sponsa Det, 176
Spring (Nash) 63, 65
Spurgeon, C E 212
Stanzas Written in my Pocket-copy,
387

Starbruck, E D, 125
Statue and the Bust , 318
Stephen, 11, 37
Stepping Westward, 29
Stevenson, R L, 9, 12, 52, 56, 63,
111, 120, 179, A84, 261, 276, 291,
292, 305, 350, 357, 359, 386, 391
Stoicism, 107, 233
Story of My Heart , 226
Strange Fits if Passion, 413
Suibi* 325

Summa Theologtca, 89
Suzuki, T, 5, 36, 57, 59, 84, 146,
148, 201, 212, 219, 223, 238. 244,
245, 264, 289, 341, 391
Swift, 32
Symbolism, 68
Symonds, 68
Synechdoche, 163

Tab'es Turned, 168, ?58, 418
1 aibai, 69
lai E, 66
1 aigi, 247
Taliessin, 317

1 ao Yuan mmg See Toenmei
Task, The , 228
Tempest, The, 37

Tennyson, 35, 60, 61, 67, 96, 115,
152, 172, 346, 384, 392, 409, 422
7 here was a Boy , 416
Theseus, 14. *

Thomson, Francis, 64

fNTTEX

Thoreau, 104,391
Thoughts in a Garden . 164, 331
Three years she grew, 393
jTiger, The, 170
Times go by Turns, 231
Tintern Abbey, 215,421
To Althea from Prtson, 113
To a Waterfowh> 97
Toenmei, 44,47, 61, 224
Togo, Admiral, 324
Tono, 44

Touchstone, The, 306
Tolstoy, 43,105
Traherne, 2,144, 261
Transcendent " I,” 78.

Trot us and Cressida, 351
Tsure-zure Gusa, 383
Tuft of Flowers, 80
Tufu. See Toho
Turner, 7

Two April Mornings, 285, 413
Two Gentlemen of Verona , 106, 432
Two Matches, 276

Underhill, E., 212
'Une Vie , 387
Unity, 433

Unjust Steward, 162
Unmon, 51, 53, 108, 116, 141, 145,
302

Unseen Playmate, Stevenson's, 357

Vaughan, 102, 259, 362, 402

Vassili, 105

Vastness, 346

Verlaine, 68

Vision, A, 363

Vision of Judgement, 200

Voltaire, 94

Von der Armut am Geiste, 111

Wafu, 67

Walden, 391

Waley, 44, 203,224, 336

Watts, Isaac, 249

We are Seven, 189, 262,341,361

Wefester, 55,56
Westminster Bridge, 355
What 1 believe, m
Whitmaft, Walt, 403
Whole Duty of Children, 292
Wild Pheasant, 406
Winter Nightfall, 332
Wither, 292
Woodlanders, The, 164
Woodspurge, The, 189
Wordsworth, 22, 29, 30, J2, 34*

37, 41, 42, 59,60,68,78,82, S7,95,
97, 102, 106, 113, 114, 115, 148,
153, 154, 157, 167, 163, 171, 176,.
182, 183, 189, 194, 197, 214, 219,
227, 229, 239, 241, 248, 258, 262,
268, 284, 331, 341, 349, 352, 356,
368, 381, 386, 392, 402,405, Chap¬
ter XXVII

Wordsworth in the Tropics, 403

Yamei, 186
Yeats, 54, 81
Yone Noguchi, 217
Young, Andrew, 57
Young Lambs, 74
Yugo, 408
Yuimakyo, 238
•

Zarathustra, 124
Zazinwasan, 35,190, 327
Zen Buddhism and its Influence on
Japanese Culture, 57, 244 —*

Zen, definitions of, 1, 2, 5, 6,8,19,
21, 23, 34, 54, 85, 103, 107, 164,
180, 192, 195, 202, 211, 216, 224,
233, 236, 246 (note), 247, 260, 263,
265, 263, 272, 279, 282, 289 (note),
314 (note, 3), 322, 344, 357, 363,,
376, 395, 396, 411,418,426,427
Zeno, 194

Zenrinkushu , 12, 28, 29, 33, 35,57,
33, 78,151, 277,279,291,315, 323,
348

Zoroastrianism, 210